


baby, i hope this never ends (badly)

by zmk



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: A little smutty, Alternate Universe - No Curse, Angst, Backstory for Nicole, F/F, Shae and Nicole are long distance friends, Slow Burn, Supernatural Elements, Wynhaught brotp because obviously, Wynonna is a proper Cop in this one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-06
Updated: 2018-11-05
Packaged: 2019-02-11 12:55:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 23,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12935736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zmk/pseuds/zmk
Summary: With the help of the Earp sisters and a quiet job that works as an escape, Nicole starts to realise that maybe her story can have a happy ending.But when a serial killer crosses into Purgatory, Nicole's job's escapist nature vanishes. Meanwhile, she's not so sure that sleeping with her best friend's sister was a good idea.She didn't realise the road to her happy ending would be this rocky.





	1. another beginning buried in rubble

Nicole left the city because it reminded her of everything she lost. She ran away to a small town with an ominous name and thought she could nurse her wounds somewhere quiet. She planned to return, sometime, but she needed  _time_.

She has more good days than bad days, now, and almost all of her wounds are now scars, and fading. Her shoulder hurts when she overexerts herself, though. She's lucky she's right handed. She still despises asking for help whenever an object is heavy enough for her to need to lift it with two hands. When she has bad days, she drowns her sorrows in the six-packs of beer that she's stockpiled in her fridge. 

She never used to like getting drunk alone. Now she doesn't have much choice. 

Purgatory is boring enough that she can relax. There are no high-profile cases that could trigger panic attacks or flashbacks. She's safe. It's part of why she chose this job. She was top of her class in the Academy, she did a stellar job in her last posting. She could have had her pick of jobs. There was a reason she chose this one. 

Nedley knows her history, and she can tell that he worries about her the way his eyes will dart to her left shoulder, the way he watches her - carefully, as though aware she's still half-broken. He doesn't coddle her, though, and he isn't unnecessarily lenient on her. For that, she is grateful. 

Shae still calls her, checks up on her almost weekly. She's worried, Nicole can tell, and she seems to have forgiven her. She tells her not to hole herself up in her house. "Calamity Jane is great, don't get me wrong," she says, and Nicole laughs, "but you need some human interaction, too." 

"I have human interaction," Nicole replies. 

" _Outside_ of work," Shae laughs. 

Shae is right. 

A week later, Nicole is out of beer. She should have bought more over the weekend. She thinks of Shae's words, and decides, with a rueful look at Calamity Jane and a sigh, that perhaps she should venture into the public eye of this small town. 

#

"Oh my god, Officer _Haught_? Crossing into the land of the living? Am I dreaming? " 

Nicole sighs. "Wynonna, hi." 

The detective grins at her, holding up a beer bottle from where she sits at the bar. "C'mon, join me," she bellows, and Nicole doesn't see any other option but to oblige. She slides onto the bar stool next to Wynonna. 

"What should I get you?" Wynonna asks her. 

"You don't -" 

"No," Wynonna cuts her off decisively. "It's, what, your first sighting in public? This deserves a reward. A celebration, of some sort. I'm buying you a drink. Waverly!" 

 _Waverly_. Nicole might not get out much - at all - but she knows the citizens of Purgatory. Waverly Earp, younger sister of Wynonna Earp. She wonders how similar the sisters will be.

"Nonna, I already told you, I can't give you freebies all the - hi," Waverly Earp says, coming to a stop behind Nicole, who swivelled around on her bar stool at the sound of her voice. 

"This," Wynonna says, proudly, as though she's showing off a trophy, "is Nicole Haught. Haughtdog." 

Nicole bites her lip to hide her smile. This is the longest time it's taken Wynonna to pop in a pun on her name.

Waverly looks at her quizzically. "Haught?" 

"Yup," Nicole replies, with a rueful smile. 

"I need you to get Miss Haught here a drink," Wynonna tells her sister. 

Waverly drags her hazel eyes away from Nicole, and the officer allows herself a moment of indulgence: she sweeps her eyes up and down the smaller woman's frame, biting back a look of admiration. When she looks away, Wynonna catches her eye and arches an eyebrow, as though she saw that quick appraisal and didn't approve. Nicole mouths a "sorry" and decides that she won't look anywhere but into Waverly's eyes. 

Nowhere else. 

# 

Wynonna's puns get worse the more alcohol she has. Nicole's responding exasperation starts to look more and more like amusement the more alcohol  _she_ has. 

"Last call," Waverly tells them. She's leaning on the bar counter and Nicole is  _only looking at her eyes_ and it's only the three of them left in Shorty's. 

"C'mon, baby girl, there ain't no last call for  _family_ ," Wynonna tries. 

Waverly rolls her eyes. "I gotta start closing up." She looks at Nicole, who is wondering why she was so averse to the idea of leaving her home before, who is wondering whether she's had too much alcohol. "Officer, can you escort my sister out of the bar, please?" 

Nicole grins. "Sorry, ma'am," she says, playing along, "but technically? Your sister's my superior. I can't go over her head on something like this." 

Wynonna high-fives her and Waverly groans and tilts her head back and Nicole is  _not admiring the fall of her hair_ and "You two are  _assholes_ ," Waverly says. 

#

It becomes routine for Nicole and Wynonna to spend their evenings at Shorty's. They don't always drink until they're the only ones left at the bar. 

Shae stops worrying as much. She also probably starts rolling her eyes more. She seems to think Nicole likes Waverly a bit more than merely platonically. Nicole doesn't know what she means by that. Besides, all of the evidence points to Waverly being straight. 

Besides, she  _really_ doesn't want to get on Wynonna's bad side. "The woman christened her gun  _Peacemaker_ , for Christ's sake," she tries to tell Shae. 

The bad days decrease and decrease and decrease. Wynonna's friends start to become her friends. Jeremy's sweet and nerdy and reminds her of who she was in high school. Dolls is abrupt but has a heart of gold, and he seems to get, without being told, her history, the trauma that she doesn't call trauma. And Doc - well, Doc is a character, but a fun character, and he's always willing to provide alcohol without asking any questions. 

But then they land a case featuring a copycat serial killer. Or maybe a resurfaced serial killer. Nedley enlists Nicole to work with Dolls and Wynonna on the case. The memories come rushing back. 

Wynonna is different when she's working. She's intense and focussed and Nicole is impressed. She and Dolls make a good team, they bounce off each other well. Nicole sees the care in Dolls's eyes when he looks at the Earp and wonders if he and Doc know they're rivals. She wonders if Wynonna's even aware that neither of the men see her in a truly platonic light. 

When Nicole sees the first body, arranged like a morbid artwork on a bed, a message written in blood on the wall, she almost throws up right then and there. She imagines metal in her skin coming alive and pulling through her flesh. She manages to keep her expressions in check, and Wynonna frowns slightly when she glances at her but doesn't say anything. 

She doesn't go to Shorty's that night. Or the next night, or the next or the next or the next. She throws herself into work and acts as though none of this is getting to her, as though she's not more aware of her left shoulder than she usually is. 

# 

It's Saturday and there's a pounding on her door. She's lying on her couch watching a crappy romantic comedy without any gunshots or blood or violence, stroking Calamity Jane. She doesn't answer the door. 

For a little while, it's quiet. 

"Fucking hell, what is  _wrong_ with you?" 

Nicole jumps about a foot into the air. Calamity Jane screeches away. "Helpful," Nicole grumbles, before rising groggily to face Wynonna. "How did you get in?" 

"I picked the lock," Wynonna says, as though it isn't a big deal. At Nicole's shocked expression, she mumbles, "I was worried." 

Nicole sighs. "Nothing to worry about," she says.

Wynonna eyes her in a way that says  _I don't believe you_. "Do you have any plans?" 

Nicole frowns. "What?" 

"Plans. Thanksgiving. Jesus, Haught, you do realise it's  _Thanksgiving_ , right?" 

"Ummm," Nicole says. 

Wynonna sighs. "Okay, Haughtshit. You need to shower and get dressed and then you're going to come with me to the Homestead. You're spending Thanksgiving with me and Waverly." 

"Wy -" 

"Nope. No arguments allowed. I'm giving you twenty minutes. I'll wait outside until then. If you take any longer, I'm storming in and hauling you out through whatever means necessary," Wynonna says decisively. 

Nicole arches an eyebrow. 

"Also, where'd your cat go? He looked cute," Wynonna adds. 

"She," Nicole mumbles. 

"She looked cute," Wynonna corrects herself. "That's what I said. Also, aren't you supposed to be getting ready?" 

Nicole sighs but has to bite back a chuckle. "I'm going, I'm going." 

#

She's assaulted by the smell of food - good food - the moment Wynonna pulls up at the Homestead. 

"Waverly's been busy, I see," Wynonna comments. "Also, she doesn't know you're coming, so, like, she might be a little surprised." 

#

"A little surprised" is Waverly freezing in the middle of placing a turkey on the table and gazing up at Nicole with wide eyes. 

"Baby girl, you remember Nicole Haught?" Wynonna asks. 

Waverly quickly retracts her hand from the plate of turkey and nods. "Umm, hi," she says to Nicole, and if Nicole thinks she's blushing then she can't be seeing right. Right? 

The sisters have to set an extra place at the table for Nicole - it's not a  _fancy_ Thanksgiving dinner, but it's homely and wholesome and reminds Nicole of everything she thought she'd never experience again. 

A hand touches down on hers. She looks up; Waverly. "You okay?" the younger Earp asks, eyes furrowed. 

She smiles, nods. "Yeah. I'm good." 

Wynonna huffs. "All we need now is alcohol." 

Waverly rolls her eyes. 

#

Wynonna leaves not too long after dinner. She doesn't answer any of Waverly's questions about where, exactly, she's going. Instead she dashes off and leaves Nicole and Waverly together. 

"I'll help you clean up," Nicole offers. 

"Thanks," Waverly says, "but we don't have to do that right now." 

Nicole tilts her head, questioning, and Waverly smiles and pours more wine into her glass. "I haven't seen you at Shorty's for, like, a while," she says casually. 

Nicole stiffens. "I -" 

"It's okay, you don't need to explain yourself," Waverly rushes to assure her. "I just - I was worried. And Wynonna. We were worried. Both of us. About...you." 

Nicole can't help herself from smiling. "You don't need to worry about me," she says. "I'm totally fine." 

# 

How did this happen? 

Too much alcohol, Nicole thinks, distantly. She's drunk, not too drunk to think, but drunk enough that her self-control is largely in tatters. 

How is  _this_ happening? she wonders, absently. 

Waverly is topless and Nicole's pants are unzipped and they're bumping against each other and pressing messy kisses against each other's lips and stumbling towards Waverly's bedroom.

Waverly's eyes are bright as she falls down onto her bed and Nicole remembers to ask her for consent and she's nodding fervently and Nicole can't say no to those shining lips so she bends down and kisses her,  _really_ kisses her, until Waverly moans into her mouth and arches into her chest and the remnants of Nicole self-control  _snaps._  

Nicole learns three things about Waverly: first, that she is a screamer. Second, that she moans and gasps and grows wetter whenever Nicole says  _you're so beautiful, baby,_ whenever Nicole says  _you sound so pretty when you scream for me,_ whenever Nicole says  _you feel so good, God._  Third, that she loves to be teased. 

For everything that Nicole learns about her, she makes Waverly come, hard. 

#

They're lying together, legs tangled up, Nicole pressing her lips to Waverly's forehead, gently, softly, Waverly playing with the fiery strands of Nicole's short hair. The sex sobered both of them up. Nicole's long pale legs are bare, but she's still wearing her flannel shirt, and she's grateful for that because she's not ready for Waverly to see her chest, to see her shoulder. Waverly's chest is bare and so are her legs but she isn't complaining about their differing states of undress. She certainly enjoyed fisting Nicole's shirt. 

Nicole feels  _happy_. Shit, she realises. Shae was right. 

"Oh," Waverly murmurs, pulling away slightly. "I, umm. I really enjoyed this, but, just to make sure we're on the same page, this isn't going to lead to, like, anything  _else_ , right?" 

Nicole's heart falters. "What?" 

"I just mean -" Waverly cuts herself off, untangles herself from Nicole. "I don't want a relationship. With anyone. Tonight was great, but I don't have any expectations of anything  _more_. I just wanted to let you know. So there aren't..." She gestures between them. "Misunderstandings. Complications."

"Oh." Nicole clears her throat. "Yeah, no misunderstandings on my side. I totally understand you. Don't worry about it." 

Waverly smiles at her, wide and heartbreaking. "Awesome. Awesome. And if you...maybe don't tell Wynonna about this?" 

Nicole laughs. "Trust me, I am  _not_ telling Wynonna Earp that I fucked her sister." 

Waverly blushes, still smiling, and Nicole forces her own smile not to slip. "I should, uh, get dressed," she says. 

Waverly nods, sits up, pulls the sheets around her body as though she isn't comfortable with Nicole seeing her bare-chested anymore. Nicole tells herself that her heart isn't hurting, that she's fine, that it was only sex, only sex, nothing more. 

Nothing more. 

She climbs out of the younger Earp's bed and searches for her pants. She finds them, grabs them off the floor, hastily pulls them on. The too-quick, too-harsh movement makes her left shoulder pang. She stifles a hiss.  _Don't show your weakness_ , she tells herself, a mantra she's repeated so often it's second nature. 

_Don't show your nature._

"I'll, umm, show myself out," she says, turning back to smile at Waverly. 

"You sure?" Waverly asks, frowning slightly. 

"Yeah," Nicole replies, keeping her smile fixed. "You, uh - have a good night's sleep, Wave." 

Wynonna's truck is pulling up as she's closing the front door behind her. 

"Haughtshit!" the detective calls. "Please don't tell me you were about to walk home at 1 in the morning." 

Nicole laughs. "How good of a lie detector are you?" 

Wynonna shakes her head at her. "I'm driving you home. Get in." 

Nicole would rather be alone, but she gets in anyway. "Thanks," she says. 

"You're going to need to do something for me in return," Wynonna tells her. 

Shit. "What would that be?" 

"Work on Monday. You're going to tell me what's been bugging you this past week," Wynonna tells her. "I'm not going to ask you any questions, but I expect the whole story. All of it. You got it, Haught?" 

Nicole sighs. She should have seen this coming. The big reveal. Wynonna wasn't oblivious enough not to wonder at the reason for her seclusive behaviour. "Sure," she says. 

 

 


	2. do you see the storm on the horizon?

On Sunday night, Nicole dreams of flashes and people she couldn't save. She dreams of not having enough time and gunshots and flash grenades and explosions. She dreams of messages in blood and wakes up sweating. She bit down too hard on her bottom lip, she realises, and it's bleeding. 

She doesn't go back to sleep. 

#

Wynonna corners her in the break room while she's making coffee. The older Earp is eating a donut and there's powder on her nose and she's looking sternly at Nicole. 

"You look tired," she says in lieu of a greeting. "Tough night?" 

Nicole takes her first sip of hot crappy coffee and nods. "And my coffee machine broke." 

"Tough luck," Wynonna says, sympathetically. And then she fixes Nicole with that look she uses in interrogation, the look of I'm-not-going-to-need-to-ask-any-questions-because-you're-going-to-volunteer-all-the-answers.

Nicole heaves a sigh and rolls her shoulders. "Okay," she says, "here's the -" 

But they're interrupted, because a body has been found at Shorty's. 

"Waverly," Wynonna breathes, all the colour draining from her face. 

#

Waverly is fine. Thank God Waverly is fine, Nicole thinks, as the younger Earp gives her a wave from where she's talking to Lonnie. Giving a statement, probably. Nicole sets her jaw and strides into the bar. 

She bites her tongue so hard she tastes metallic blood and freezes and doubles over and can't breathe. 

Immediately, there's a hand on her back and someone - Dolls - is kneeling down to look at her. "Officer Haught," he says, not as gruffly as she expected, "Officer Haught, do you need a moment?" 

Nicole rises slightly and almost breaks down again. The victim has been strung up the same way Shae was when Nicole found her and  _shit shit shit breathe, Nicole, breathe_ and above the dead woman in blood are the words HELLO, HALFBREED. 

"I, umm," she's saying as she's stumbling away, "I need a moment. I need some air. Fresh air. I'll - I'll be -" 

Dolls stops her with a concerned frown and a hand on her arm. "Go back to the station," he says. 

She hates this, hates that she can't do her job, but Dolls isn't giving her any room for debate. She sees the look in his eyes and _knows_ but still needs to ask, "How much do you know?" 

He gives her a sad smile. "More than Nedley." 

# 

Nedley tells her that he doesn't want her working the case. 

"I _know_ this guy," she argues. "I've come up against him before, and if it's  _him_ instead of a copycat like we thought -" 

"Officer Haught," Nedley cuts her off. "Take the rest of the day off. You're too close to this." 

She knows he's right, but she also knows that her obsession with this killer, her previous knowledge of his methodology and motivations, should be an advantage. 

She storms out of his office, but not before he makes her hand in her service weapon.

#

She phones Shae as soon as she gets home.

"Have you forgiven me?" she needs to know, as she locks and double-locks and triple-checks her door. 

There's a pause. "Yes," Shae says. 

" _How_?" Nicole demands, as she opens the door to her fridge and reaches for the bottle of tequila that she's left untouched since she arrived in Purgatory. 

"Nic, don't do this to yourself," Shae tells her. "What happened?" 

She can't tell Shae what happened because she can't risk Shae's suspicions about her being confirmed. "Nothing, I just, I just need to know how you managed to forgive me." 

Shae sighs. "I - you made the best of the worst situation. I can't blame you for what you did. I would have done the same thing." 

# 

Nicole pummels the punching bag in her bedroom, bare-fisted. She cleans and cleans and cleans the assault rifle and sniper rifle that she usually keeps locked away. 

She looks at her back in the mirror and has to bite back tears at what she's lost. 

She can't get caught up in revenge. She has to keep a clear head, she decides, as she pulls her kevlar vest out of her closet. She can't let herself go mad over this. 

_Halfbreed,_ he wrote. 

_Halfbreed._

_Halfbreed._

_Halfbreed._

#

Someone is knocking on her door. She's had about a third of the tequila bottle. 

"Go away, Wynonna," she yells. 

"Wrong Earp," Waverly calls back, indignant. 

Surprise flickers across her face. Why is  _Waverly_ at her doorstep? 

"If you don't let me in I'll scream loud enough to ruin your reputation in this town forever," Waverly threatens, and she  _sounds_ serious enough about it, and Nicole isn't so drunk yet that she doesn't care whether or not Waverly does it. 

"Coming, I'm coming," she says, rising off her couch and making her way to her front door. She opens it and Waverly comes storming in.

"Wynonna's stuck at work but apparently she got a call from someone, some doctor woman, Shane or Sae or something, and she was worried abut you so  _she_ called me and I saw you freak out this morning at the crime scene and why the  _fuck_ do you have a bottle of tequila out? You're not drinking yourself to death are you? I'm here to make sure you're not dying and to confiscate all your alcohol and also -" 

"Waves," Nicole says, thinking  _how on earth did Shae get Wynonna's number,_ thinking  _it feels weird to hear you say fuck outside of bed,_ thinking  _please slow down because I'm having difficulty thinking._ All she says is "Slow down. Please." 

Waverly stops, turns around to face her. Her eyes are aflame - with worry? With anger? - and she has her hands on her hips and Nicole feels so goddamn tired. 

"Where's your fridge?" she asks. 

Nicole sighs, points. 

Waverly nods, grabs the unfinished bottle of tequila on her way to the kitchen. "Were you drinking this out of the  _bottle_?" she calls from the kitchen. 

"Will you get pissed if I say yes?" Nicole calls back. She doesn't want to think about how this feels like a relationship - either the beginning of one, when one is willing is drop everything for the other, or the end, when one is tired of having to drop everything for the other. 

Waverly peers around the corridor. "I'm not pissed, Nicole," she says. "I'm just worried." 

Everyone's worried, Nicole thinks. 

And  _Hello, halfbreed,_ he wrote. 

# 

Waverly stays with her for the rest of the day. 

"Don't you have work?" Nicole asks. 

"Shorty's is gonna be closed for, like, the near foreseeable future," Waverly tells her. "What with the whole crime scene thing." 

"Right," Nicole replies. 

They're on her couch. Nicole is lying down, legs bent and head on a cushion. Waverly is sitting by her feet, watching her. 

"Do you have Netflix?" Waverly asks, and Nicole looks at her over her knees. She nods. Waverly presses, "Wanna watch something?" 

Nicole swallows. They'll switch on the TV and look through Netflix and  _Continue watching for Nicole_ will show up and  _Because you watched this crappy 'chick-flick'_ and Waverly will make a judgment without knowing the context that Nicole doesn't want to explain. 

"Sure," she says, anyway. If Waverly chooses something with blood and gore and violence then she'll just have to keep the panic attacks at bay. 

Waverly doesn't reach for the remote, though. Instead, she gazes at Nicole, brow furrowed, mouth twisted into a thin line. 

Nicole expects her to ask  _are you okay?_ or  _how are you doing?_ or  _what can I do to help?_ or maybe just silence. 

Instead, Waverly says, "You're not okay." 

Nicole closes her eyes in something that feels like defeat. "No," she says. 

There's a pause. "I'm here," Waverly tells her. "If you want to talk. About...it." 

Nicole opens an eye. "It?" 

"You know," Waverly says, looking away, fumbling for words. " _It._ Whatever it is that made you freak out this morning. Anything. The reason you were drinking tequila out of the bottle. The reason you're not okay." 

"And if there's more than one reason?" Nicole asks. 

"Then it's its instead of it. Or whatever the plural of it is. Point is, I'm here, to listen, or whatever," Waverly says, and Nicole gets wary at the thought of what Waverly might mean by  _or whatever_. 

Waverly seems to read her mind. Hurriedly, she says, "Look, about Saturday -" 

"You don't need to explain -" Nicole begins, but Waverly doesn't let her stop her. 

"I'm sorry," Waverly tells her, green eyes wide and irresistible. "It was super shitty, only telling you what I wanted - or, what I  _didn't_ want - after we slept together. I'm sorry. I could blame it on the alcohol, but that doesn't make it less shitty." 

"It's okay," Nicole replies. "You can stop saying shitty." 

Waverly slaps her knee lightly. "I'm  _apologising_ , Nic," she exclaims. 

Nicole smiles at her. 

There's a silence. 

Then, "Do you want to?" 

Nicole frowns as her mind screams _this is dangerous territory_ and her heart starts to race. "Do I want to what?"

"You know, just," Waverly stops, waves her hands around, continues, "talk. About why you're not okay." 

Nicole looks at her for a long time. Wynonna asked her for the whole story. Wynonna is still going to want to know what happened to make her like this. She's having enough difficulty coming to terms with the idea of telling the woman who's probably the closest to a best friend she's had in a while. Telling the woman she slept with and may have dangerous feelings for? That's a whole other enchilada. 

"I don't," Nicole says, quietly. "Want to, that is." 

Waverly nods, quickly, tears her eyes away as though Nicole's gaze burns her. "Right. That's okay." 

#

They're halfway through a documentary on the Black Panthers when an engine revs outside. Moments later, Wynonna comes tearing into Nicole's house. 

Waverly pauses the documentary just as Wynonna starts shouting. 

"Haught, you got some explaining to do," she rants. "Hell,  _Dolls_ knows more about your shit than I do and  _I'm_ supposed to be your closest fucking friend!" 

"Wynonna -" Nicole starts. 

"Should I leave?" Waverly asks. 

"Did you take out all the alcohol in her apartment?" Wynonna asks Waverly, who nods. "Good. So. Nicole. Tell me what's up. Tell me what it is that's got Nedley so cagey about you and Dolls so empathetic." 

Nicole eyes Wynonna, who throws herself down on the coffee table between the couch and the television. How much can the Earp handle hearing? How much can  _Nicole_ handle telling? 

"Nedley told me if I got your permission he'd give me your file," Wynonna tells her. "I'd really rather you tell it to me in person." 

Nicole swallows. "You can tell him you have it," she says. "My permission." 

Wynonna shakes her head, furiously. "No. That is the easy way out. You told me you'd tell me this morning. You didn't. So you're going to tell me now." 

Nicole glances at Wynonna, glances at Waverly, glances at the TV screen. "CJ needs feeding," she lies, for no reason whatsoever. 

"Should I leave?" Waverly repeats. 

"Do you want her to leave?" Wynonna asks Nicole. 

Nicole does not want to make this decision. "Maybe it's better if you read my file before I tell you anything," she says to Wynonna, without answering her question. 

Wynonna looks like she isn't sure she should believe her. "Nedley took you off the case." 

"He thinks I'm too close to it for my own good," Nicole says. 

"Are you?" Wynonna asks. 

Nicole thinks of the two guns laid out on her bed. She thinks of the bulletproof vest she checks. She thinks of the nightmares that are starting again. She thinks of why she was glad Waverly didn't try to take off her shirt. 

"I worked on a case like this one before," is all she says. 

"He's a serial killer, right?" Waverly asks. 

Nicole nods as Wynonna says "Yes, but not notorious enough to get one of those cool media-given pseudonyms." 

Nicole wonders if that's the right use of pseudonyms. "You shouldn't underestimate him," she says. 

"Are you going to tell me why not?" Wynonna challenges. 

Waverly leans forward to place a hand on Wynonna's shoulder. "Go easy on her." 

Wynonna looks at Waverly, and then at Nicole, and her expression softens. "Nic," she says, "would it be easier, for you, if I read your file instead of ask you for the story first?" 

Wordlessly, Nicole nods. 

Wynonna sighs. "Do you promise to answer any questions I have after?" 

Nicole nods again. 

Wynonna purses her lips. "Is it safe," she asks, "to leave you alone now?" 

"Yes," Nicole says. 

Wynonna looks skeptical. "You'll be at work tomorrow." 

It's not a question. Nicole nods anyway. 

Wynonna sighs and stands. "It's late," she says. She looks down at Waverly. "Come on, baby girl. Let's get home." 

Waverly shoots Nicole a worried look over her shoulder as the two Earp sisters leave. 

 

 

 


	3. a nameless fear descends

Nicole goes to work the next day. Her stomach is knotted up with nerves. She wonders whether Wynonna is going to be late - like usual - or if today is going to be the exception. 

Today, it turns out, is the exception.

She sees Wynonna sitting at her desk, reading - a file. Nicole's file? 

Whoever the file belongs to, Nicole figures she shouldn't interrupt Wynonna's reading. She heads over to her own desk, and slumps onto her chair with a sigh. She hangs her head and closes her eyes in an attempt to prepare herself for a day at work, to clear her head. 

"Officer Haught?" 

She startles. "Sheriff! Morning," she says, her voice hoarse. She hasn't spoken since last night. 

Nedley offers her a gruff smile. "Earp's reading your file," he said. "She told me you gave her permission, and I didn't think she'd lie -" 

"She didn't," Nicole assures him, quickly. 

He gives a solemn nod. "And you, uh, you're okay?" 

"Of course," she says, her answer more of a reflex than a truth. 

His smile returns, marginally less gruff. "I know this case means a lot to you. You can help out, obviously, but I don't want you in the field." He pauses, and she knows what he's about to say before he does. "Do you think he's after you?" 

Nicole looks away. She doesn't need to think about her answer; she already knows. "I think there's a good chance of that, yes, Sheriff." 

#

The next time a shadow falls upon her desk, Nicole expects Wynonna, but as soon as she looks up she sees that Wynonna is still engrossed in a file, the same file, a different file, she can't tell. 

Dolls is the one at her desk. 

"Expecting a different partner?" he asks. 

Nicole shakes her head. "Just wasn't expecting you." 

He gives a brisk nod, and gestures for her to rise. "Come with me," he orders. Hesitantly, she obliges; he leads her into his separate, closed-off office. 

"Should I be nervous?" she asks as he closes the door behind her and shutters the blinds. 

"Are you scared of being honest?" he asks in response, turning around to face her. He is suddenly more imposing than usual. 

"That would depend on what the honesty is required for," she tells him.

"Smart," Dolls grunts. "I'm guessing you wouldn't mind knowing what I know." 

It takes her a second to link his comment back to their brief exchange at the crime scene. "I definitely  _wouldn't mind_ , no," she says, tilting her head slightly as she watches him. 

He walks around his desk and sits down, motioning for her to do the same. She doesn't see why she shouldn't. 

"Jeremy and I, we moonlight a bit," he tells her.

She raises an eyebrows. "As...?"

This seems to exasperate him somewhat. "Ever watched Supernatural?" 

She tenses. "Um. A while ago." 

"Well, Jeremy and I are a little like non-related Winchesters," he says. "Except Jeremy sticks to research and science, and I stick mainly to hunting." 

"Hunting," she repeats, stiffening up even further. How much  _does_ he know?  _More than Nedley_ , he told her - but how much more? 

"We've never seen anyone like you before," he continues, seemingly ignorant of her discomfort. 

Against her legs, her hands clench into fists. He knows. 

"This killer we're up against, now, I'm guessing he knows what you are, too," Dolls says.

"You hunt," Nicole manages. "You  _hunt_. What, monsters?" 

Surprise, and then worry, flashes over Dolls's face. "I don't - not hunt, exactly. All the time. We find.  _Creatures_. If they need to be killed, I kill them." 

Heat starts to spread through Nicole's body. Her shoulder burns. "And me?" 

"You  _do not_ need to be killed," Dolls says, quickly. "I'm on your side. You're safe. Okay? I won't hurt you." 

The heat doesn't dissipate yet. 

"But we've never seen anyone like you before," he repeats. "I'm not sure - I never thought you were even possible." 

It feels great, to be discussed like this.

"That's why I want to see them," he tells her, solemnly, utterly seriously. 

Nicole falters. The heat falters. Her shoulder still burns. "See them?" she echoes. 

Dolls nods. There's earnestness in his gaze, but she's not ready to feel safe yet. "Your wings," he elaborates. 

"I don't know what you're talking about," she says, almost robotically. She stands and moves towards the door. 

"Officer Haught -" Dolls begins, but she's closed the door behind her by the time he gets through her surname. 

#

Shit. 

She must have slipped up, somewhere, somehow. But when? Where? How? 

Shit.

She needs to be more careful. Even if Dolls means her no harm, if he could figure her out then others can too. 

Shit. 

# 

The first thing Wynonna says to her is "Holy shit." 

No pun on her name. No greeting. 

Nicole looks at her, expressionless. "You read my file." 

Wynonna nods, a shocked expression on her face. "Holy shit." 

Nicole wonders if the contents of her file have reduced the infamous Earp to a vocabulary of two words. "Are you broken?" she asks, in a weak attempt at humour. 

She doesn't know if she would hate for Wynonna to tell her  _I'm sorry_ , or if she wouldn't mind it. 

Wynonna is gripping the edge of her desk hard enough that her knuckles are white. "You went through some shit." 

"That's one way of putting it," Nicole replies dryly. 

There's sadness - sympathy, maybe, too - in the detective's eyes as she looks at Nicole. "That's why you came to Purgatory? To run away?" 

Nicole nods. 

"And this killer we're dealing with -" 

"Yes," Nicole says, tiredly. "He came after me before. He couldn't hurt me physically so he killed my family, and he...forced me to make choices that really fucking sucked." 

"Fucking hell," Wynonna breathes out. "Listen, dude, I'm sorry I had Waverly throw away all your alcohol."

"She threw all of it away?" Nicole asks.

Wynonna pshaws. "Of course not. I saved it all for me." 

Nicole shakes her head with a smile. "It's okay. It's good that you did that. Alcohol shouldn't become a coping mechanism." 

"Hey!" Wynonna objects, pressing a hand to her chest as though she's been physically hurt. "That is a low blow, Haughtshit." 

"And the puns are back," Nicole comments, her smile becoming a grin. 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I was thinking of doing a chapter from Waverly's POV, so we can see what's going on on her side of things...what do you guys think?


	4. waverly

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a shorter chapter than usual, I think, and not super plot-related, but I hope it gives some insight into Waverly's mindset and all.

Champ was killed a year into their relationship and three months into his career as Officer Hardy. 

He wasn't  _the one_. He wasn't the love of Waverly's life. But he didn't need to be her soulmate for her to cry, to mourn, to sob, when he died. She'd cried for the lost opportunities and the mistakes they didn't have to have made as much as she cried for him, for what they had. His death made her think that she should have tried harder. 

She thinks perhaps that was when she first understood the emotional implications of  _onus_. 

His death didn't  _traumatise_ her. She knows she can't steal that heavy a word, can't substitute  _grief_ with  _trauma_. What Wynonna deals with is  _trauma_. What Waverly deals with is sadness. She isn't sure it deserves italics. 

She thinks about Thanksgiving far more than she ought to. She's wracked with guilt, at what she did and how she did it and how she's not sure that Nicole understood the gravity of her apology. 

She has a habit of making mistakes that she doesn't know how to fix. 

# 

Wynonna teases her that maybe she shouldn't get involved with any more cops. She doesn't ever feel safe replying that it wasn't the  _cop_ part that caused Champ's death, it was the  _reckless incompetence_ part. 

But the dead ought not to be disrespected.

Right? 

Still, she knows she should know better when she collapses onto her duvet covers underneath Nicole. She knows she should know better before that, when she and Nicole are making their distracted way to her bedroom. She knows even before that, when their eyes lock and  _fire_ builds and it's as though they don't have a choice about kissing, about touching, about any of it. 

She could blame it on the alcohol. She could blame it on that pull, that irresistible openness in those goddamn brown eyes of Nicole's. She could blame it on all manner of things. 

But she knows that she wanted to kiss Nicole, and she wanted Nicole to lower herself over her body and kiss her senseless while her fingers reached and stroked and made her feel in ways she'd never felt before. 

She'd learnt three things about herself that night: first, that she could be really,  _really_ loud in bed. Second, that she  _loved_ it when Nicole told her  _you're so beautiful, baby,_ and  _you feel so good_ and called her  _beautiful girl_ and  _sweet girl_ and said things that made Waverly blush to think of now. Third, that it was delicious, delicious torture to be teased. 

It was in that collecting-your-breath-and-your-thoughts moment after that everything hit her. The similarities. 

It hadn't been as poetic, as powerful, when it happened with Champ, but she'd fallen into bed with him on a Thanksgiving evening. They'd been less drunk, because it hadn't required as much courage. It hadn't meant as much. 

He'd been in his first few months at the Purgatory Sheriff's Department. Just like Nicole. He'd come into Shorty's almost every night. Just like Nicole. 

Not with Wynonna - Wynonna had despised him - but still. 

It hit her, it all hit her, in one single moment. She felt it like a boom of noise crashing into her chest. She felt guilt rise up. She felt like she owed Champ what she'd never given him in his life. 

Wynonna would tell her she was crazy, which was why she didn't tell Wynonna. They are close sisters, and she loves Wynonna to death, but there are things - big small things, powerful emotional things, that she keeps to herself. 

She has an irrational suspicion that if she gives everything of herself away, then she might lose her wholeness. 

She still hates the way she handled that emotion. It wasn't fair, what she did to Nicole. She saw the way Nicole shut herself off in that moment, the way her eyes dulled a little, and her heart broke. 

# 

She spends way too much time thinking about what she did and should have done and didn't do. She spends way too much time - or not enough time, she can't decide - trying to figure out  _why_ , trying to relive those moments and figure out why she's so captivated by her sister's best friend, why she can't stop thinking about her. She spends so much time trying to figure out how she can redeem herself in Nicole's eyes. 

She has decided, though, that even if she can't stop flashing back to the feeling of Nicole's hands on her bare skin, Nicole's slender fingers on her clit, Nicole's mouth on her breasts and lips and everywhere, Nicole's teeth on her bottom lip and earlobe and shoulder whenever she sees Nicole's hands spread out on her leg or her desk or her steering wheel, she can't look for anything romantic. 

Wynonna has had enough taken from her. Waverly doesn't think it's fair if her own sister steals her best friend. 

She can stop imagining Nicole half-naked whenever she sees her. She can stop flashing back to Nicole's eyes dark with lust whenever they lock eyes. She can force her feelings down into platonic grounds. She did too shitty a thing to get back what she closed herself off from before taking a breath to calm down. 

Fucking Champ. 

And yet it's not his fault. It can't be. He's  _dead_. 

It's only hers. 

She can stop thinking about waking up next to Nicole and playing with her hair and kissing her, morning breath be damned, before doing anything else. She can stop thinking about snuggling up against the comforting warmth of the officer's body. She can stop herself from imagining domesticity with Nicole Haught. 

She  _can_. 

Maybe - instead of focusing on how idyllic a dinner date with Nicole would be, how perfect Nicole smiling at her in a tux would be,  _oh God Nicole in a tux_ , how sexy Nicole must look like in action - if she dual wields guns like Root did in Person of Interest then Waverly might just die when she witnesses it, so it's probably good that Nicole very probably only has one gun - she should focus instead on figuring out how to make up for her douchebag behaviour. 

Things will be okay. This doesn't have to be a mistake that she can't fix. 

 

 

 


	5. shae

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This takes place before the beginning of the fic. It's from Shae's POV and details what she had to forgive Nicole for, etc, etc.

She and Nicole break up. Or rather, she breaks up with Nicole, because if any word can describe the redhead it's  _self-sacrificing_ , and Shae doesn't want Nicole to sacrifice any more of her own happiness in order to see Shae happy. 

She plans to let her down gently. To avoid all the clichéd phrases of  _it's not you, it's me._ She doesn't tell Nicole that it's her endless good intentions that have broken Shae's heart, that it's her unfailing attempts to love Shae the way she loves Nicole that impacted on their relationship's deterioration. 

All she has to say is "Nic? I think it's time we talked," and Nicole breathes out a sigh that seems to release all the tension in her body, and replies, "Oh." 

It's easier than she expects. Nicole is accepting of her decision, and doesn't fight her, and is quiet and understanding and kind throughout the discussion. Or rather, Shae's monologue. 

It's her automatic acceptance that hurts Shae the most. 

When they've finished verbally terminating their relationship, Nicole gathers all her things, scoops them into a box, which she scoops under her arm. She turns right before she opens the door, turns to face Shae, and she says "I'm sorry," and she says "Thank you." 

Shae smiles at her. "I'm sorry too," she says. 

"Don't be," Nicole tells her. "You were perfect." 

The words  _just not for me_ don't need to be said.

And then Nicole leaves. 

# 

Shae is three-quarters of the way to completely-and-utterly-over-Nicole-Haught when the cop sends her a message. 

_We need to talk. It's important. Can we meet up tonight?_

She doesn't know exactly which emotion is more prevalent in her reaction: dread? Nervousness? Worry? Hope? 

_Sure. Where and what time?_

Nicole replies  _I'll come to you. Stay in your apartment, please?_

Apprehension overwhelms all other emotions.  _Nic, what's wrong?_

_I'd rather tell you in person. I'll be there around six, that okay?_

Shae texts her that that is okay. Her heart is pounding as she sends the message. Her heart is pounding as Nicole replies  _See you then._  

Why would she need to stay in her apartment? 

She heeds Nicole's plea, regardless of how insane it sounds. 

# 

Nicole is late. Usually, she's fairly punctual, especially when she sets the time to meet. 

Today, she's half an hour late. 

Shae is officially incredibly worried. 

There's a knock on her door, and she rushes to open it, her lips ready with  _What took you so long?_

She never gets to ask. She only gets to say "You're not -" before something glints and there's a quick shot of pain in her forehead and then everything goes black.

# 

When she comes to, her head is throbbing and she's chained up. Crucified, without the nails, thank God. 

Heavy-duty chains cut into her wrists and her waist and her ankles. She can't move. She's gagged. She's in a dusty, dark room with a sloping ceiling. An attic? A basement? 

"Hello, Ms Pressman," comes a voice from behind her. Footsteps ring out, and a man comes into sight. He's tall, and immaculately dressed, in a white suit with a red tie. His hair is slicked back and he's cleanshaven and smiling at her. "Sorry about the crowbar; I had to be efficient." 

Shae realises she's bleeding. 

"You probably shouldn't try too hard to struggle out of your bonds," he says, as though he's announcing the weather. "Do you feel that metal bar against your spine? You can nod, it's okay." 

Hesitantly, she nods. 

His smile looks stuck-on and it's really fucking offputting. He holds up his right hand to reveal what could be a remote for a number of things. "I press a button on this here device, and that bar will deliver a nice little  _shock_ to your spine. Ever been electrocuted before, Shae?" 

Shae is terrified. 

The man turns away and walks to the wall opposite her. He places his hand against it, and -  _holy shit_ \- it begins to  _move_. It creaks and cracks downwards until it's disappeared into the floor. 

"See anyone familiar?" he asks. 

Shae sees Nicole, and wants to cry. 

Nicole is crumpled in a ball, unconscious. 

"What the fuck did you do to her?" Shae tries to scream, but she's gagged, and the only sounds that come out are incoherent groans. 

"She'll be okay," he says. "Well. Relatively okay." 

He snaps his fingers, and Nicole's body spasms and she gasps awake, sweating and panting. She rises to her feet in a sudden, fast movement, and Shae sees that her chest is stained with blood. 

The man holds up a hand, and Nicole freezes. Her jaw works, and she growls, "Let me go." 

Shae is starting to think that this man, somehow, is able to use magic. 

What. The. Fuck. 

The man tsks. "Nicole, Nicole, Nicole," he says. "It's rude not to greet your former beloved." 

Shae sees dread flood through Nicole's thoughts as her eyes shift and happen upon Shae. 

"You  _fucking_ bastard," she grits out. 

The man smiles at her, and smiles at Shae. "Aren't you going to introduce her?" 

Nicole looks at Shae and there's panic in her eyes. "Where's my sister? You asshole,  _where the fuck is my sister_?" 

"That is very impolite," the man says. His finger presses down and Shae starts to scream even before the electrocution rockets through her body. 

"Tell her who I am, Nicole," he says. "Tell her who I am." 

"Tell me where my sister is," Nicole says. "And don't you fucking dare shock her again." 

Shae can barely think. She feels wetness on her cheeks and realises, belatedly, that she's crying. 

The man swivels towards Shae. "I have a story for you," he says, smiling with ill-concealed glee that makes her sick. "This afternoon, I got into contact with dear Nicole here. This was after she made plans to meet with you; I assume she was trying to warn you about me. I told her, very clearly, that I had her sister in my grasp, and she could either visit you or save her sister. Here's the catch - if she went to save her sister, I'd come for you." 

Was that why Nicole was late? 

"And so she went on a wild goose chase, trying to find her sister," the man continues. "While she did, I found you. And her wild goose chase brought her, quite successfully, to me. I'm still more powerful than her, so it was easy to knock her out quite soundly. But I wanted you to know, Ms Pressman, that she was willing to let you die." 

"Shae," Nicole is saying, tears in her eyes, the muscles in her neck straining as she tries to move, "Shae, I'm sorry, I just -" 

"Are you going to tell her who I am, now?" the man asks. He holds the electrocution device up, threateningly. 

Nicole glances frantically between Shae and him. She closes her eyes. "Shae, this, uhm." 

"Come on," the man encourages. 

Shae feels like she's going to throw up. What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck. 

"He's my father," Nicole finally says, as though the words are painful to pronounce. She looks tortured. Shae can barely think. 

_What? The? Fucking? Fuck?_

"Shae," the man says, tilting his head to the side. "Do you understand that Nicole was perfectly okay at exchanging your life for her sister's? Do you understand that she was perfectly content with your death? Do you understand that she chose her sister over you, without regard for the consequences?" 

"I'm so sorry," Nicole is saying. 

"Show her your wings," the man says. Nicole's fucking  _father_ says. 

Nicole looks away. She looks like she's living her worst nightmare. 

" _Show_ her your  _wings,_ " the man repeats, with more force in his voice. "Or should I make you?" 

"No," Nicole begins. "Don't do -" 

But she is cut off by her very own scream. The man lifts up a hand as though pushing air upwards with his palm, and Nicole's body arches and there's a tearing sound and then two huge, glorious, honest-to-goodness  _wings_ are unfolding behind her. 

 _Holy shit_ , Shae wants to say. 

"Good girl," the man says, and Nicole is sobbing. He moves towards Shae, then, and Nicole screams out a bloodcurdling " _NO!"_

But the man only clicks his fingers, and the chains around Shae fall, and so does she. She collapses to the ground and can't bring herself to move past her pain. 

And then he's placing his hand on the wall behind her. She doesn't turn. She can't turn. She isn't able to see what the descent of the wall reveals. 

She sees heartbreak tear across Nicole's face, and she  _knows_. 

He watches with grim satisfaction as Nicole tears across the room and when Shae is finally able to turn her head, she sees Nicole kneeling over a body and sobbing and crying. 

With shaking, numb hands, Shae removes the gag from her mouth. 

She sees what's about to happen before it does, but she can't make herself cry out. She's opening her mouth and trying to push sound out to warn her ex-lover, but she's too late. 

Nicole is kneeling and sobbing over the bloodied murdered body of her sister. The man - her  _father_ \- pulls a long, arching, black blade from a scabbard at his side that Shae didn't see before.

He takes one step, two steps, three steps, and Shae sees symbols shining, glinting, on the blade as he arcs it down. 

With the first cut, Nicole howls. 

He pins her down with one hand and hacks at her wing. 

He hacks off her wing, but only the one. 

And then he stands, and pulls out a phone. 

"911?" he says, panic lacing his voice. "911, I'd like to report an incident, or an accident, or - an emergency, I'm sorry I don't - I don't know what to call it...." 

When he ends the call, he turns to Nicole. "You might want to make sure the paramedics don't see your wings," he tells her. "Or, wing and a fifth." 

He turns eyes that glow red on Shae, smiles, and disappears.  

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've ever written anything like this chapter before, so I really hope it turned out okay.


	6. when to run, when to hide

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand we're back to Nicole's POV. 
> 
> Sorry for the slight delay in the update, I was travelling yesterday so couldn't post. 
> 
> Hope y'all enjoy!

Wynonna shoots her looks across the police station, and greets her whenever they pass each other, and talks to her whenever their work demands it. 

Apart from that, though, she's remarkably quiet whenever Nicole is nearby. 

Nicole thinks Wynonna might be avoiding her. Maybe she's processing something. Maybe she's taking time off from their friendship in order to think her way through the contents of Nicole's file. 

The last time they had a proper conversation was the evening after Wynonna read her file, and everything seemed fine. She isn't sure what's wrong, only that something is, and she's still contemplating how to deal with it when Nedley calls her into his office on Thursday morning.

"Officer Haught," he greets her, and launches straight into the reason he wanted to talk to her. "Dolls convinced me that we need you on this serial killer case." 

Nicole isn't quite sure what to think about this. "He did?" 

Nedley gives a brief nod. "He made a convincing argument. I agree with him about your unique perspective on this guy. But if something goes wrong, if things start getting bad, I don't want you to push yourself too hard, got it?" 

"Yes, Sheriff," Nicole says, immediately. 

He eyes her uncertainly. "Very well then. You're reinstated. Don't make me regret this, okay?"

# 

When she next sees Dolls, she grabs him and asks, "Why did you do it?" 

"We need you," he says. 

She tilts her head and looks at him, really looks at him. 

"I still want to see your wings, though," he tells her. 

She rolls her eyes. "If you get me really angry, they might just pop out unexpectedly." 

At that, he almost laughs. " _Pop_ out?" 

She raises an eyebrow. "You don't know as much as you think you do." 

"And  _that_ is part of why we need you," he replies, immediately. 

He turns to walk away, but stops. "Talk to Wynonna," he suggests, quietly, before leaving. 

#

Wynonna is late to work. 

Nicole decides she'll sit at her desk and wait. 

Jeremy comes springing through the station, a blue file in his hand, heading towards the Earp's desk. When he sees Nicole there, he freezes, before resuming his light step. 

"You are not Wynonna," he says to her. 

"You're obviously very observant," she tells him. 

He smiles nervously. "Umm, should I give this to you to give to her?" he asks, waving the file. 

"Might as well. I've been looking for some reading material to tide me over while I wait," she replies. 

He frowns. "You, uh, you can't read it." 

"I figured." Nicole stretches in the chair, and sighs. "I won't read it, don't worry." 

He nods, and puts it carefully down on the desk. "Thanks." 

Nicole narrows her eyes at him. "Jeremy, are you scared of me?" 

He freezes. "Umm." 

"Dolls told me that, you know, you and him, you -" 

"Oh." Jeremy breathes out a sigh. "Okay." He starts to talk, then, really fast. "I'm not scared of you, like not at all, not really, but if you don't mind I'd really really appreciate it if you came into, my, like, lab, and I could kind of run some tests? Nothing too weird or anything, it's just, you know, you're like this unique specimen and - shit, that sounds bad, I'm sorry, but just - you're pretty special, and I'm sure you know a lot that could help us, so if you'd give us some advice -" 

"I'll think about it," she says. "The advice part. The testing sounds...ominous." 

"It's really not," he tells her. "And obviously I'd make everything clear beforehand and I'd, like, get consent -" 

"Having a party without me?" 

Jeremy spins around and Nicole leans sideways to see past him. Wynonna stands, looking rather nonplussed, before them. She's holding a box of baked goods. 

"You are very late," Nicole greets her. 

Wynonna's gaze shifts towards Nicole. "I have donuts?" 

"I'm here, I'm here," Waverly calls out, rushing inside in a whirlwind of energy. "Also, I brought coffee, and all my notes, and -" She skids to a stop when she sees Nicole. "Hi." 

Nicole looks at her levelly. "Hi." 

Wynonna swallows. "Jeremy needed Waverly's help with some, like, ancient things," she tells Nicole. "That's why she's here." 

Jeremy grins at Nicole, then says to Wynonna, "I gave Nicole a file for you." 

Wynonna's gaze lands on the file. "Blue...Nic, did you read it?" 

"Nope," Nicole replies, popping the 'p'. 

"Nic, why are you at my desk?" Wynonna asks, then. 

"I wanted to talk to you," Nicole replies. 

Wynonna nods. "Off with you two, then," she says to Waverly and Jeremy. Once they're gone, she turns her attention back to Nicole and huffs. "Nerds, the both of them. What do you wanna talk about?" 

"Have you been avoiding me?" she asks. 

Wynonna sighs. "I mean, maybe a little?" She sits down on the edge of her desk and puts down the box of donuts. "I was figuring out how to tell you that there's something I need to tell you." 

Nicole tilts her head slightly. "Okay," she says, carefully.

"Basically," she says, "it's about my gun."

Nicole's eyebrows rise. "Peacemaker?"

"Yup," Wynonna replies. "There's a reason it's called that." 

Nicole waits. Wynonna fidgets. 

"You know Shorty's is opening up -" 

"Wy _nonn_ a," Nicole interrupts. 

The older Earp grins ruefully. "Okay, so it's called Peacemaker because my great-great-granddaddy called it that." 

Nicole frowns. "Great-great..." 

"Wyatt Earp. This is, like, a family heirloom of a gun," Wynonna says. "And I'm the only one who can use it, because I'm the Earp heir." 

Nicole bites her bottom lip. "And that means...?" 

"That I can kill any supernatural creature," Wynonna says, in a rush. "Any supernatural creature at all." 

Nicole's heart seizes up. "Okay," she says.

"And Dolls thought I should tell you," Wynonna adds. "He said you'd believe me." 

Nicole almost laughs. "Well, I do." 

Wynonna gives a tight-lipped nod. "He also said that there's stuff that your file doesn't contain," she continues. "Supernatural stuff. I was thinking, if you're up for it, we could discuss it over a few beers at Shorty's." 

Nicole thinks for a few seconds. Then she stands. "Sure," she says. "That sounds good." 

A hopeful grin takes command of Wynonna's face, and Nicole can't help but grin back. "You're giving me my desk back now?" 

Nicole nods. "Only if I get a donut, though." 

Wynonna grins, and offers her the box. "Also, Nic?" 

Nicole takes a chocolate-covered donut and looks up at the detective. "Yeah?" 

"We also need to talk a bit about my sister," Wynonna tells her pointedly. 

Nicole's smile drops. "What?" 

Wynonna laughs. "Haughtshit, you look  _terrified_. Don't worry about it. We can talk tonight at Shorty's?" 

Vaguely, Nicole nods. "Tonight. Sure thing."

Wynonna's still laughing as Nicole walks away.

 

 


	7. when to face your enemy, when to fight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A while ago I promised some badassery, and here's the start of it.

"So I know that I can be kind of...oblivious sometimes," Wynonna begins as they walk into Shorty's. "But I, you know, notice things." 

"Things?" Nicole asks. 

Wynonna doesn't look at her. "I know you like my sister." 

Nicole weighs her words, and settles on, "Umm. What?" 

Surprisngly, Wynonna laughs. "Come on, Nic, you really don't realise how obvious you are?" 

Nicole's eyebrows rise. "I'm...obvious?" 

"Yeah, you look at her like she's the fudge to your sundae or some shit," Wynonna says. "It's, you know, gross."

Nicole is saved from replying to this when Shorty approaches them.  "Wynonna," he greets her, and throws a nod in Nicole's direction. "Do you know where Waverly is? 

Wynonna frowns. "She's not here?" she asks, glancing around the bar. 

"Nope," Shorty says. He looks worried. "She's never been this late for a shift before, and she hasn't called or anything." 

Wynonna's frown deepens. "I'll...okay." 

"If you find out where she is, tell her to get her ass here," Shorty says, a tone of affection in the comment. 

Wynonna nods. "I will." 

Shorty leaves, and Nicole and Wynonna share a look.

"I'll call Jeremy," Wynonna says. "Maybe he and Waverly are still caught up in all that nerdy shit they do together." 

There's a crushing feeling deep in Nicole's chest.  _Don't jump to conclusions,_ she tells herself. 

# 

Jeremy tells Wynonna that Waverly left over an hour ago. 

Wynonna tries to phone Waverly. Each time it goes to voicemail.

Nicole sits down to steady herself and really, really, really hopes that her hastily-reached-conclusions are wrong. 

Eventually, Wynonna sits down next to her. "Shit," she says, for the hundredth time. 

# 

They're heading back to the station to meet up with Dolls, getting out of Nicole's police cruiser and heading towards the entrance when  _he_ makes contact. 

"Shitfuckshit," Nicole breathes as her mind screams and her knees buckle. 

"Nic? Nic, what's wrong?" she hears Wynonna saying, but it's distant. 

 _Sweet child o' mine,_ her father breathes into her mind, and she swears to fucking God if he's quoting Guns 'N Roses - 

He sears a vision into her mind, an image of Waverly tied up against a bar of metal and  _fuck_ and he says  _Come find me, come find her._  

Her mind clears, then, and she finds herself collapsed on the ground and breathing heavily. 

"Wyn?" she asks, her voice hoarse. She looks up, and Wynonna is backing away from her. The Earp's eyes are wide and hold a mixture of shock and fear. 

Shit.

She flexes her shoulders and is suddenly aware that her father's contact and her collapse caused her inhuman genes to kick in, her supernatural side preparing to defend itself. 

Her wings are out. Her eyes are probably glowing. 

"What the  _fuck_ are you?" Wynonna breathes, and her hand is inching towards Peacemaker and  _shit._

Nicole imagines what Wynonna sees when she looks at her. The wing her father hacked off grew back, but not prettily. While her right wing is angelic and white and beautifully feathered, her left wing is gnarled and scaled and red-black and demonic. Her father made her more halved than she was before. 

_Hello, halfbreed._

Wynonna pulls out Peacemaker just as Dolls comes running out. There's a moment when he sees Nicole's wings and sees Wynonna preparing to aim and freezes, before bursting into action. He grabs Wynonna and forcibly holds her hands down. "We need her, Wy, we need her." 

Wynonna hauls herself away from him. "You  _knew_?"  

He's breathing hard. "We can discuss this later, but right now Waverly's missing and Nicole can help us. Okay?" 

"She's  _not fucking human,_ Dolls," Wynonna yells, like she can't understand why he's not taking her side on this. 

Nicole rises, slowly. Her shoulder aches, the weight of her demonic wing straining the muscles. "Wynonna," she tries, but the older Earp hauls Peacemaker up again. 

"Don't you come any fucking closer," she growls. 

Nicole holds her hands up in surrender, but her palms are sparking with the beginnings of flame. "I'm sorry," she says. 

"She can  _help_ us," Dolls tries to tell Wynonna. 

"I know where she is," Nicole says, softly, hoping this might help, but it only seems to anger Wynonna further. 

"And why the  _fuck_ would you know that?" Wynonna yells at her, her voice so furious and forceful that Nicole flinches.

"Because this guy? The killer we're dealing with?" Nicole pauses and takes a deep breath and urges herself to calm down, urges the electricity running through her veins to slow. "He's my father. He's after me. That's why he took Waverly. You were right, I like her, and he figured that out somehow, so this is him -" 

"We're locking you up," Wynonna decides. 

Nicole startles. "What?" 

"We're going to lock you up, and go find Waverly, and then come back and deal with you," Wynonna says. 

"Wynonna," Nicole tries again, carefully, a plea in her voice. " _I know where she is._ He wants  _me_. Okay? I can defuse this situation -"

"The way you did with Shae?" Wynonna cuts her off. 

That hurts. Nicole feels the words like a physical blow to her heart, and she stumbles back. "That's not fair," she manages. 

"I don't fucking care what you think is fair," Wynonna hisses. "Dolls, we gotta lock her up." 

Dolls mouths a  _sorry_ at Nicole. 

Nicole closes her eyes. She forcibly shrugs her wings away. "You can't win against him," she tries. 

"I'm the motherfucking Earp heir," Wynonna grits out. Nicole doesn't fight as something coils around her wrists. The flames in her veins are automatically doused. "I can win against anybody."

Nicole doesn't fight as they lead her into Jeremy's kinda-sorta-lab. Jeremy's there, wide-eyed. He looks scared of her. 

The shove her into a glass cage and she slides down to her knees. "I hope you're right, Wynonna," she says. 

Wynonna doesn't reply. 

"Wait, are you - are you leaving me  _alone_ with her?" Jeremy asks, panicked. 

"You'll be fine," Wynonna says dismissively. "That thing can hold anything." 


	8. when the storm hits

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, in case it's a little confusing at first, I altered the way the Ghost River Triangle works a little (this fic is basically an exercise in how-can-I-alter-the-way-the-show's-universe-works) 
> 
> Also, this is a long chapter. Buckle in!

Dolls pulls Wynonna aside as soon as he's sure they're safely out of Nicole's hearing range. 

"Earp," he says, sharply. 

"Dolls," she shoots back. "What the fuck are we waiting for? We gotta find -" 

"You're not thinking straight," he tells her. "You need to breathe, and calm down, and think a little." 

She glares at him. 

"I get that right now everything feels like a mess," he says, "but we gotta be smart about this. Okay?" 

She rips her arm out of his grasp. "Just because we sleep together sometimes doesn't mean you fucking know what's in my head, Dolls," she snaps. 

# 

"Jeremy, please," Nicole is saying, her eyes tracking his movements. 

"I'm not letting you out," he says, hurriedly, as he looks for his headphones. 

"I can  _help_ ," she tries, her voice strained. "I know where Waverly is, this is a trap set for  _me_ , I -" 

Jeremy turns to face her and throws his hands helplessly into the air. "Nicole, that doesn't  _matter_!" he cries. "I can't let you out. You're not gonna be able to convince me otherwise." 

Nicole sighs, and thumps her head against the thick reinforced glass wall. "Look, Jeremy, I can break out of this cage if I wanted to, but I don't want to hurt you by mistake," she tries again. "Please. What do I have to do to convince you to let me out?" 

Jeremy finds his headphones. "I'm sorry, Nicole," he says, "but I'm not letting you out." 

"Jeremy," she says. "Jeremy, I swear to God if you put on those headphones -" 

Jeremy puts on his headphones, and cranks the music up loud enough for her to hear it. By doing so, he drowns anything she might say out. 

Shit. 

# 

Wynonna leaves Dolls, starts up her motorcycle and races off. 

Shit, shit, shit. 

He knows why she's acting like this. He understands where her head's at right now, even if she refuses to let him help her. She's mad, and worried, and scared, because her baby sister has been kidnapped and all the angel/demon imagery of Nicole's wings is probably giving her flashbacks to the night when Willa and her dad were killed. 

Dolls is practically a child soldier, stolen from his family and engineered into the kind of monster he tries to help, or kill. He understands that part of Wynonna, the part simultaneously fostered and broken by childhood trauma of a shattering size. He was ripped from his family where her family was ripped from her, and she still has Waverly where he has nobody except the family he's chosen after escaping years of brainwashing, but there are elements of their backstories that align. 

That's also why he understands Nicole's turmoil. Family she doesn't want to accept ruining the family she grew up with: he understands the feeling, if not the specific instance, of that kind of situation. He has a pretty good idea of what she might be going through right now. 

Which is why he lets Wynonna drive off, and heads back into the station. 

# 

Nicole weighs the pros and cons of breaking out. She can't do it quietly or safely. The only way she can get herself out of this glass cage is to explode it, but shards of glass will go flying and she doesn't want to hurt Jeremy. 

She's furious at Wynonna for looking at her like she's a monster, for drawing Peacemaker on her and practically preparing to fucking  _shoot_ her. 

She's furious at Dolls for doing nothing but mouth  _I'm sorry_ behind Wynonna's back. 

She's furious, most of all, at herself, for not realising that this was inevitable. 

Of course, of course, of  _course_ her father would take Waverly. That was his modus operandi: steal away those Nicole cares about. He must have figured out what Wynonna figured out about Nicole's feelings towards Waverly. 

If she can figure out how to get out of this mini prison then she's going to make sure he fucking pays. 

When he took Shae and killed Nicole's sister - or rather, her half-sister - she wasn't powerful enough to defeat him. 

He'd known then, though, what she knows now: one day, she'll be more powerful than him. 

If that day isn't today, then she'll force it to come early. 

She's just about figured out how to break out of this fucking cage when Dolls comes storming in and hauls Jeremy's headphones off and orders him to help him  _get her the fuck outta there_. 

Jeremy doesn't argue.  

"You know where Waverly is?" Dolls asks her curtly. 

She nods. 

"Let's go," he says. 

#

Ever since Waverly was kidnapped by vampires a few months ago, she's started wearing a watch that has embedded within it a tracking device. Tap the clockface twice with two fingers, and it activates. 

That's how Wynonna finds her, in an abandoned barn, thirteen steps outside of the Ghost River Triangle. 

#

 

"He's outside the Ghost River Triangle?" Dolls questions, frowning. 

"Yup," Nicole replies. "He doesn't have any semblance of humanity, so I guess he can't cross in. That's why I chose to come here, you know, after." 

Dolls eyes her uncertainly. She knows even before he speaks that he's about to voice the one question she's been killing herself trying to answer. "So how did he manage to get that victim and message into Shorty's?" 

Nicole acts nonchalant, shrugging. "Must've had an accomplice." 

# 

They reach the barn, and Nicole drags in a breath of cold night air and rolls her shoulders back, feeling the painless tear in skin as her wings erupt from her shoulder blades. 

"You need to not do anything stupid," she warns Dolls. "Don't get between me and him, okay?" 

He's in the process of nodding when Wynonna comes flying through the side wall of the barn. 

Nicole stiffens. "Okay, new plan. You get her out of here, okay? I'll deal with my father, and I'll get Waverly back to you." 

"Yes, ma'am," Dolls says, already starting off in a run towards Wynonna's still form. 

Nicole flexes her hands, feeling fire burn through her veins instead of blood, feeling electricity zap between her fingers, feeling her eyes start to glow. One glows gold, the other red. 

She makes her way into the barn. 

"You sent the Earp heir after me?" her father laughs, swivelling to face her. "You really thought that would stop me?" 

Nicole doesn't answer him. Her gaze zeroes in on Waverly, who looks unconscious. She's bleeding, and her breaths are shallow, and when Nicole focuses she hears the younger Earp's heart stuttering, struggling. 

"Your wing grew back," her father notes, visibly disappointed. "It does add a certain something to your whole vibe, though." 

"I'm not here to talk," she growls. 

"But I really, really want to talk," he whines, petulantly. He's in his trademark white-suit-and-red-tie combination, but his hair is a little tousled. Maybe Wynonna put up more of a fight than Nicole had expected her to be able to. "Your Earp heir tried to shoot me, did you know that?" 

"She almost shot me, too, so you're not special," Nicole spat. "What do you want to talk to me about?" 

"I want to discuss why you never call me  _Dad,_ " he says. "Also, I wanted to thank you." 

Panic seizes control of her thoughts. She pushes it down. "Thank me?" 

He grins at her. "Come on, Nicole, isn't it obvious? I can't cross the Ghost River Triangle, but somehow I managed to place a victim and a slur in the bar you frequent. Doesn't quite add up, does it? But then, if you start to think about how every devilish father has a sort of mental bond to his children, and you realise that his favourite daughter  _was_ able to cross into Purgatory, the whole thing starts to make more sense." 

"No," Nicole breathes. 

"Did you have any dreams, the night before the victim was found?" her father asks her. "You didn't, did you? It's just a void." 

Nicole forgets to breathe. 

"Thank you, for doing my dirty work for me," he tell her, his smile so wide she can practically see his molars. "And that message, well, that was a nice touch. I was going for something more father-daughter-focused, but I guess your self-hatred decided to take things in a different direction." 

" _Fuck_ you!" Nicole yells, clenching her hands into fists.

"I just want you to recognise me as your father," he says. "As your family." 

She snarls. She shoots out a hand, too quickly for him to be able to react. Lightning hurtles from her palm into his chest, and he's shoved up and through the barn wall opposite the one Wynonna flew through. 

She sets him alight to slow his recovery down - Hell is cold, not hot, and all devils hate fire - and rushes over to Waverly. She presses her free hand to Waverly's chest - over her heart, and she curses whatever biblical creature decided  _this_ has to be the way you heal someone - and channels her energy into healing whatever damage her father's done. 

Waverly is more hurt than she realised, though, closer to death than she realised, and by the time the youngest Earp gasps awake, probably healthier and fitter than she's ever been in her life, Nicole can feel that her power is waning. 

"Nicole," Waverly breathes, her green eyes heartstopping. 

"We don't have much time," Nicole tells her, the words rushed, as she sets about releasing the bonds that her father used to chain Waverly up. 

"You have  _wings_?" Waverly says, awe in her voice. 

Nicole opens her mouth to reply, but her father's voice fills the barn before hers can. 

"That was  _not_ nice," he says, and Waverly freezes in terror and Nicole is turning just as he says the one thing that he's only ever said once before: her true name. 

The force of it knocks her to her knees, and she can  _feel_ him encroaching on her mind, and  _not again not again not again_ and his footsteps ring out and he yanks her up by her hair. 

"You're still not powerful enough to beat me," he smiles. 

Her hatred for him, in that moment, is so powerful that it blinds her. 

That it gives her an idea. 

She grabs onto his shoulder with her right hand, holds him in place, and shoves her demonised wing into his chest. 

 

 

 


	9. it'll be too late

Nicole reaches into the depths of her father's soul, touches the hub of his power with the edge of the wing he hacked off, and  _pulls_. 

He doesn't scream. He grits his teeth, and the edges of his face start to waver in and out of focus as he fights to hold onto his human appearance. 

"An angel cannot kill another angel," he gasps out. 

Nicole's demonic wing starts to be weighed down with the power she's draining out of him. She knows she needs to stop, soon, or she might grow too power-hungry, too dangerous. "But for an angel - even a half-angel - to kill a devil? That's justice," she hisses. 

All devils start out as angels, as pure, as winged beings of light incarnate. Her father sired her when he was still an angel.

She wrenches her wing from his chest. It thrums with power, like a guitar string pulled taut. 

"You can't kill your family," he tells her, harshly, sneering, taking a stumbling step back. "You don't have it in you." 

Nicole decks him. 

"You," she grits out, "are not. My. Fucking. Family." 

Each word is punctuated with the blow of a fist. She punches him with such force that he's forced to stumble backwards. She advances on him, wings out, body humming with power, both hers and his. 

"You," she says, "will  _never_ be my family." 

He straightens and spits out black blood. "Come on, Nic. Let's be civil." 

She sends a bolt of black-edged lightning into his heart. While he's momentarily incapacitated, she races over to where Waverly is still standing, wide-eyed, terrified. 

"Waves," she says, breathless, " _Run._ " 

"What?" Waverly looks confused. "No. I'm -" 

" _Waverly Earp_ ," Nicole tells her sternly. "Get your ass out of here before he hurts you again." 

Waverly hesitates, but only for a moment. Doubt flickers in her eyes, and worry, and fear, but then she's off, and Nicole can breathe more easily.

She turns to face her father just in time to see him throw a concentrated jet of flame towards Waverly's running form. 

# 

Dolls races Wynonna to the hospital. Her wounds don't cry out  _supernaturally caused_ , so he can allow medical doctors to take care of them. She's in and out of the consciousness the whole way there. 

He phones Doc as soon as she's being bundled into the hospital by hurried nurses. "I need you to get here," he says. He hangs up, and waits. 

As soon as Doc arrives, Dolls tells him to watch Wynonna for him, and then leaves. 

"Worst case scenario," Nicole told him while they made their way to find Waverly and Wynonna, "I have guns at my place. And...angel-killing bullets. If I fail, enough of those in the head? He should die." 

He heads to her house to search for the guns and those bullets. He can't live with the possibility of  _not_ returning to give backup to Nicole, not when he knows how much is at stake. He can at least get Waverly out of there. 

# 

Nicole throws herself in the line of literal fire. It hits her in the gut, and she cries out, because she feels as though her organs are being burned internally by the blast. 

Her father rises, shakily, to his feet. "You were always too self-sacrificing for your own good." 

She's on the ground, breathing heavily, wings dragging against the dusty wooden barn floor. He strides towards her. 

"You don't even know how to kill an angel, do you? Well, angel, devil, celestial being," he says, and starts to laugh, standing over her. 

She forces herself to her feet, biting back a groan. "You've always underestimated me." 

"You never gave me any reason not to," he retorts. 

#

Waverly is about fifty feet away from the barn when she stops. She can't leave Nicole alone back there. She can't. 

She turns, and heads back. 

Dolls meets her on the way. An assault rifle is hooked over his right shoulder and a sniper rifle over his left, and his face is drawn. He sees her and seems to relax, just a little. 

"I gotta get this to Nicole," he says, nodding towards the assault rifle. 

"She's still in the barn," Waverly tells him. Her body is still warm from Nicole's healing, like she's been lying before a fire for hours. 

"Right," he says, and takes off. 

# 

"Just admit it," he says. "Just admit that you've never truly hated me. Admit that some part of you  _wants_ to be my daughter,  _wants_ to work with me." 

Nicole spits in his face. 

"Haught!" comes a voice, and then her loaded assault rifle is flying through the air towards her and  _Dolls that is mighty stupid_ but she manages to grab it before her father. She's engraved runes into the barrel and the handle of the gun, so it sears her hands but only lightly. It would sear  _his_ to a crisp if he were to hold it. 

"A gun? Really?" her father tsks. 

She smiles, and pulls down on the trigger. A stream of bullets impale him. She shoots out his eyes. 

He falls. 

"And  _that_ ," she says, discarding the rifle and walking over to his body, "is how you kill an angel." 

He's not dead yet, but he's close. She knows what to do: if she floods his power back into him, after he's been riddled with bullets imbued with her blood, his soul should implode. It'll be too much: the blood of kin - the blood of a half-angel, poisonous to a devil - emptied into his sight, the thread connecting him to the world, and the rapid return of power that was once his but has been tainted by not-similar-enough DNA. 

She unfolds her wings and brings them down to touch against his forehead. 

He grins a bloody grin. Dread filters through her. She plunges the power she stole back into him. 

This time, he screams. But as excruciating  _sound_ rips from his opened mouth, he grips onto the edges of her wings, and pain  _explodes_ through her. 

She screams too. 

Nevertheless, she persists. 

And then it's done. 

His hands fall away; his chest stutters, stills. He goes limp. She  _feels_ the disappearance of his existence. Death is a tangible thing, for a half-angel. 

She steps away. Pain shudders through every part of her body. 

She falls to the ground. 

Everything goes black. 


	10. the rubble starts to clear

Dolls has hidden himself amongst some bushes with a sniper rifle, eyeing out the scene through the Wynonna-caused hole in the closest wall of the barn, so Waverly is the first to get to Nicole after she collapses. 

She watches in horror as her kidnapper's body disintegrates into black ash, and then is blown away by a breeze she can't feel. 

"When celestial beings die, their bodies return to nature," Dolls says from behind her, huffing a little. 

She nods, and then turns to face Nicole. 

The redhead is a crumpled heap on the floor. She fell onto her side, and her white wing is hiding her chest and face, and there's a tearing feeling in Waverly's heart as she looks at her. 

Nicole has to be okay, she's thinking. 

Nicole has to be okay. 

# 

Wynonna's sitting on the top step of the porch, drinking a beer, when Dolls and Waverly pull up. Her right hand is in a sling, and she looks distraught. 

Dolls heaves a sigh. "Go check she's okay," he tells Waverly. "I'll look after Nicole in the meantime." 

Nicole is still unconscious. They had to carry her into Dolls' SUV - she wasn't terribly heavy, but it was a difficult job, because they'd had to do their best to try to stop her wings from scraping against the ground - and she was now laid out across the back seats. Waverly hadn't torn her eyes away from her the entire drive to the Homestead. 

# 

"What is she, exactly?" 

Wynonna's voice is dull. Waverly winces. 

"Umm. I think she's half-angel, half-human," Waverly says. "Wyn, I know that you usually see these things as a sort of us vs them thing, but she's not -" 

"Not what?" Wynonna speaks harshly. "Not the  _same_? Not  _like_ the others?" 

Waverly frowns. "She  _saved_ my  _life_ ," she tells her sister, firmly. 

"Only because I couldn't," Wynonna grumbles. 

"That's not the point," Waverly says. "That's not my point." 

"What  _is_ your point, then?" Wynonna still hasn't looked at her. She's staring off into the distance. 

"My point is that Nicole killed her father. She refused to recognise him as family. My point is that she  _chose_ to save me, when nothing and nobody was  _making_ her. My point," Waverly concludes decisively, "is that she is  _good_." 

Wynonna glares at her. "Do you remember who killed Willa, Waverly? Do you remember who forced me to turn Peacemaker on my father? Do you? Because  _I_ sure do.  _I_ could never forget that." 

"Of course I remember," Waverly breathes. "But Nicole wasn't one of those devils. Besides, they were  _devils_. She's very clearly aligned herself with the angels." 

"Has she?" Wynonna's knuckles are white around the beer bottle. "Did you see her wings?" 

Waverly loses patience. "You of  _all_ people should know not to make surface-level judgments of people!" 

"You're right," Wynonna says lowly. "But Nicole's not a person." 

#

Dolls has settled Nicole down on a hastily-constructed hay bale mattress covered with a blanket when he hears raised voices. It doesn't take a rocket genius to figure out what the argument is about. Wynonna hates devils with a passion after they killed her older sister and used some Jedi-mind-trick-like power to force her to kill Ward Earp, and seeing as though all devils start out as angels, she doesn't see angels too kindly either. Her emotionally-charged views are exactly why he chose not to share his suspicions about Nicole with her.

He's willing to bet that Waverly is trying desperately to convince her that Nicole is  _not evil, not like them._

Nicole is curled up in a ball. She's moved exactly once since she collapsed in the barn, and that was to wrap her wings around her body. She's created a sort of cocoon for herself. 

He knows that she'll be okay, that she just needs to be left to sleep and her body will start healing itself soon enough. He doesn't worry. 

That is, he doesn't worry _until_ Nicole rolls over, so that her rather demonic wing is exposed to the world instead of her angelic one, and he hears a scraping, rattling sound, and he sees that the red-black scales are glowing ominously, and - _shifting_ , vibrating. 

# 

Nicole wakes up slowly. She gradually becomes aware of sound - a soft rustling, breathing, heartbeats - and she painstakingly gains awareness of her surroundings. It's cold; she feels light, maybe it's morning? Day? 

How long has she been out? 

Her eyelids flutter open, and for a few long moments her vision is blurred and vague. She feels as though her mind is underwater. Where is she? 

Also, something is different. Something...what? What's different? 

She squeezes her eyes closed and starts to shift slightly, rustling her wings and - 

Oh. 

Her wings.  _That's_ what's different. 

 _But for an angel - even a half-angel - to kill a devil?_ she'd said.  _That's justice._

Justice. 

She wants to laugh. She feels suddenly giddy. 

"Nicole? Nicole, you're awake?" 

Her vision clears and  _Waverly_ and she tries to smile but she's sore, everywhere.

"Waves," she whispers, her voice hoarse from misuse. 

Waverly rushes froward and kneels before her. "Oh my god, oh my god, I'm so glad you're okay," she rushes out, eyes shining, and -

"You're crying," she says. 

Waverly sighs. " _Yes_ , I'm crying, you idiot, I thought you were  _dying_ ," she says, half-laughing, half-crying. 

This time, she does smile. "I'm a little hard to get rid of," she tells her. 

"Well thank  _God_ for that," Waverly breathes, and Nicole looks into her eyes, green and clear and terrified and  _happy_ , and for a moment she's spellbound, and Waverly stills, and Nicole's eyes drift down to her lips, and Waverly leans forward, just a little, and - 

"Apparently her wings changed," someone says -  _Wynonna_ \- in a begrudging moan of a voice, and Waverly practically  _leaps_ away from her. 

"Hey, Wynonna," she greets the detective weakly. 

Wynonna looks at her expressionlessly. "Stand up." 

"Wy, she's -" 

"No, it's okay," Nicole says to Waverly. "I can stand, it's okay."

She's right: she  _can_ stand, but it takes ages for her to make it to her feet, and she has to bite back more groans than she'd like to admit in the process, because every single part of her feels as though it's been burned, pummelled, plunged into icewater, and burned again.

"Your wings," Wynonna manages. 

Nicole grins, then, finally letting her giddy happiness show. "I noticed almost as soon as I woke up, and I never thought it would happen but I think killing my...the devil who sired me, I think that redeemed me? Somehow? I got rid of the power he held over me, and -" 

Wynonna looks at her, and at her left wing, which is now feathered and white and as glorious as her right wing, the way it used to be, and Nicole's heart starts to sink as the oldest Earp storms out of the barn. 

"I'm really sorry about her," Waverly says. "Sit, Nicole, you're going pale." 

Nicole hesitates, but Waverly raises her eyebrows and gives her a stern look and Nicole listens. Waverly smiles. "Good. Okay. So, Wynonna's dealing with this in her own way, and it'll take a while, but I think she'll come around." She makes her way to the makeshift bed that Nicole spent however many hours on, and sits cautiously down.

Nicole remembers Wynonna's shock - horror - fear? - when she saw her wings. _What the fuck are you?_ she'd asked. 

"Nicole?" Waverly's voice is soft. "Nicole, thank you." 

Nicole frowns slightly. "For?" 

"Saving my life," Waverly says, as though it's obvious. 

"Oh." Nicole smiles. "Well, of course. I couldn't - " She cuts herself off, scrambles for an appropriate ending to the sentence, and settles on "not. I couldn't not." 

Waverly darts quickly forward and presses a light kiss to Nicole's cheek, and Nicole can feel her cheeks burning and reddening. 

"Listen," Waverly says then, her voice still soft but a little graver, a little quieter. "I, uh. I heard what he said to you. About making you kill that woman?" 

Nicole clenches her hands into fists and looks away. 

"Hey, hey, Nic, look at me," Waverly says. "Look at me, Nicole. Please?" 

Nicole doesn't know how to deny a Waverly who says  _please_ , so she looks at her. 

"That wasn't your fault. Okay?" There's a resoluteness in Waverly's eyes as she says this. "He took control of you. It wasn't  _you_ who killed her, who strung her up. It was him, through you. It _wasn't your fault._ " 

Nicole doesn't realise that she's started to cry until Waverly's face falls and she wraps her arms around Nicole and pulls her against her. She rocks the half-angel gently from side-to-side, saying "Shhh," saying "It's okay, it'll be okay". 

"I'm sorry," Nicole sobs. "I'm so sorry."  

 


	11. the stormclouds lighten, dissipate

"How long was I, you know," Nicole gestures as though the air will provide the right word, "out?" 

Waverly is sitting next to her on the hay-bale-bed, angled towards her. "Three days," she says. "Dolls got Nedley to give you the week off, though, so you don't need to stress about that. He was really understanding." 

"I'll remember to thank both of them when I see them again, then," Nicole says quietly, making a note to self about it. "So what, I gave you trouble for three whole days? I'm really sorry." 

"Don't you dare," Waverly warns her with a soft smile. "You weren't trouble at all. Actually, you did this thing where you wrapped your wings around you while you slept? Like a cocoon?" 

Nicole's cheeks redden. She rolls her shoulders back, even though her wings aren't out.  "Yeah, I do that sometimes. Especially in winter." 

"It was really cute," Waverly tells her. Nicole's cheeks burn even hotter. "We did get a little worried, though, when your scaled wing started to burn with, like, oily flame-like stuff. It was very concerning. But you seemed okay." 

Nicole smiles. "You really didn't have to look after me that long," she says. 

"Well, of course. I couldn't  _not_ ," Waverly says, echoing Nicole's words from earlier. She leans forward a little, and alarm bells start ringing in Nicole's head. She stands, swaying slightly on her feet. 

"Okay, well, umm, I guess I should go," she says awkwardly, looking down at Waverly, who's frowning. "Check up on Calamity Jane, and all that." 

"We got Doc to take care of her," Waverly informs her. "He's a cat person." 

Nicole grins at that. "Yeah, he's made excuses to come over ever since he found out I have a cat." 

There's a pause, until Waverly speaks. "You really don't need to leave," she says, standing up. "I really don't mind having you -" 

"I do, though," Nicole interrupts her gently. "I feel like I'm intruding here, and Wynonna obviously isn't comfortable with my presence, and I  _really_  don't want to encroach on your life any more than I already have." 

Waverly doesn't seem convinced. "Are you sure you're okay to go?" 

Nicole sticks up a thumbs-up and nods. "I'm perfectly fine." 

Waverly still doesn't seem convinced. "I'm driving you back to your place, though," she says, her tone leaving no room for debate. "Also, I'm not going to just drop you off. I'm not leaving you alone until I'm, like, 250% sure that you're perfectly fine." 

# 

Calamity Jane does not seem to have missed Nicole terribly much. She's curled up in the corner of the couch in Nicole's living room, sleeping. 

"This is why I don't like cats," Waverly announces. "They're far too removed from emotion. Like, they're not straightforward at all." 

"Wait. Hold up. You don't like cats?" Nicole gasps in mock horror. "Okay, I'm sorry, but that's it. The last straw. You're dead to me now." 

Waverly's eyes widen. "That quickly?" 

Nicole nods. 

"But I -" Waverly swallows, hard, and for a splitsecond Nicole's worried that she didn't realise she was joking, but then she sees a sparkle in Waverly's green eyes. "I stayed by you for three days," she says, bringing a hand to her heart. "How can you turn me away? After all that?" She gasps, then, and cries out, "Are you - are you as heartless as your  _cat_?" 

A retort comes to mind, but Nicole's distracted. "Are you serious?" 

Waverly frowns in confusion. "Serious? No, I'm joking - no, Nicole, of course you're not heartless, I didn't mean that, you have, like, the most full heart ever and you're a really kind person -" 

"Waves," Nicole laughs, softly, "I meant what you said about staying by me. Did you really do that?" 

Waverly stills, and Nicole realises that she's blushing. "Well. I mean. Kind of? I couldn't just... _leave_  you. Well, I did, sometimes, leave you that is, because I needed to smooth things over, with Wynonna? So I'd, like, alternate with Dolls, a bit? But otherwise, yeah, because - like - Nicole, I thought you were  _dying_. I was terrified, of course I wasn't going to - to  _leave_  you like that." 

Nicole's heart feels like it's going to burst. "Well, I wasn't," she says weakly. "Dying, that is." 

Waverly rolls her eyes, and thumps Nicole playfully - lightly - on the arm. "Yeah, no shit, Sherlock." 

They stand there for a while, then, in silence, staring at each other. 

"Promise not to do anything like that again?" Waverly asks, at the same time as Nicole says "I didn't realise you cared that much," not bitingly, but curiously. 

And then, "Sorry," Nicole says, ducking her head, "what did you say?" 

Waverly's blushing again. God, she wants to keep making her blush. "I just - it's, like, stupid. Ish. But...if you could promise? Not to do the three-day-coma thing again? It's kinda not fun. For, you know, me."

"Well, it was super fun for me, like a  _blast_ , so I'll have to think about it," Nicole says seriously, and can't hide her smile when Waverly laughs. 

"What did you say, though?" Waverly asks, then, sobering slightly. 

Nicole bites her bottom lip. "Um. It sounds rude, but I just - I didn't realise that you cared, enough," she says. "About me. To do that."

Waverly's eyebrows rise in surprise and she takes a step forward. "Nic, I - do you really think I don't? Care that much?" 

Nicole can only shrug. "I'm not used to it, is all."

Waverly's eyes warm. "Well, you should probably start getting used to it. I care, like, a whole lot about you, so I'm going to keep doing -" she pauses, and swallows, and tries again. "I care about you. A lot." 

 "Well damn," Nicole responds, smiling. "You're going to make me blush." 

# 

Nicole manages to have a nightmare-free night. She doesn't dream of anything; she sleeps better than she has in years. 

Who knew vanquishing her mortal enemy would be so beneficial for the bags under her eyes? 

# 

She blinks awake to see sunlight creeping into her room, and realises that she was so bone-tired last night that she forgot to close the curtains. Evidently, her body still has some healing to do. 

She realises that someone is knocking at her door. She checks her watch, blinking groggily as she swings her legs out from under her duvet. Calamity Jane is lying on her bed, looking up at her. She meows her morning greetings, and Nicole picks her up and kisses her ginger forehead. 

"Coming!" she calls to whoever is at the door. She realises, as she frees a hand from CJ's fur to twist the doorknob, that all she's wearing is a long shirt. She thinks maybe it used to be a sleeveless sports jersey, but it's old enough that the letters and graphics that must once have adorned it have faded with one wash too many. 

"So, I hope you like pancakes," Waverly greets, smiling brightly and holding up a cardboard box that looks like it once housed Wynonna's favourite donuts. "Also, hello. Good morning. How are you?" 

Nicole has a habit of smiling involuntarily around Waverly. "Hello," she says. "I'm good, actually. I do like pancakes. This is Calamity Jane - awake this time, and in a very attention-seeking mood." 

Waverly's smile brightens, if that's at all possible. "Well, I'd be in need of attention too, if you'd left me alone for half a week." 

Nicole remembers, rather belatedly, her manners. "Well, seeing as though you brought, you know,  _pancakes_ , I kind of have to invite you in." 

Waverly's eyes light up and good God, she's sunshine incarnate. Nicole can barely look at her without being assaulted with this absurd desire to  _smile_ all the time. She steps aside and gestures for the younger Earp to come in. 

Waverly, it turns out, makes very good pancakes.


	12. sometimes storms leave rainbows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alright, so here comes a thousand words of wayhaught...are you ready?

"You seem distracted," Nicole says with a grin. 

Waverly snaps her gaze up to Nicole's face. "What?" 

"Do you want me to put pants on?" Nicole asks, her grin only widening as Waverly blushes. 

They've eaten breakfast, and now they're cleaning the dishes together, and God this is way too domestic for Nicole's heart, and Waverly can't seem to tear her gaze away from Nicole's bared legs. 

"You just, umm. You have very long legs," Waverly says, swallowing hard. 

Nicole waggles her eyebrows. "Jealous?" 

Waverly rolls her eyes. "What? No." She takes on a look of mock offence. "Officer, are you...mocking my height?" 

"No," Nicole says, immediately and sincerely and dramatically. "I may be mocking your lack thereof, though." 

Waverly's cheeks redden and she storms away, but Nicole can see that she's stifling a smile. "Okay, you're washing the dishes alone then." 

Nicole laughs. 

The only way Nicole had been able to convince Waverly to leave last night was to tell her that she could bring her breakfast in the morning. She doesn't think she's going to be regretting it anytime soon. 

Nicole's bare-legged attire, truth be told, is revenge. She notices Waverly's distraction and fidgeting and smiles because this is payback for that one time Waverly walked into the station wearing a sinful black skirt and killer heeled pink boots. Nicole has still not recovered. 

Despite Waverly's half-hearted protests, she goes to pull on sweatpants anyway. God, this feels so strange, in the best fucking way. Waverly Earp standing in her kitchen putting away the last of the dishes they washed, distracted by her legs, as morning heat pours through the windows into her house. 

Nicole is about to exit her bedroom when a screeching sound tears through her mind. She grips the side of her head and bites her lip too hard at the pain of it. It's her true name, she realises, someone is chanting her true name, and -

Shit - 

She crashes down to the ground, kneeling down against the wall and squeezing her eyes shut and willing for this spout of painful communication to pass. 

 _We've been looking for you,_ the voice croons.  _We've been looking for you for an awfully long time._

If they're able to talk into her mind, then that must mean they - whoever they are - know where she is. 

She must pass out, because the next thing she knows she's opening her eyes to see worried green eyes and hear Waverly asking her frantically if she's all right. 

"I'm fine," she says, the words slow, her voice hoarse. "I'm fine, just, help me get up?" 

Waverly is frowning, but she helps Nicole get up anyway, and as she does Nicole is hit with the smell of  _Waverly_. She smells like summer, Nicole thinks, and has to get away from her as fast as possible before she does something she'll regret. She takes a hasty step back, breathing in deeply. "Okay, let's - why don't you sit down?" Waverly asks, worriedly. "Should I get you something to drink? Water?" 

Nicole nods somewhat dazedly, allows Waverly to lead her to the rumpled duvets of her bed. It's distracting, terribly distracting, the way Waverly feels next to her, her left arm around Nicole's waist, her right hand gently clasping onto Nicole's wrist - she's so warm, and soft, and fuck she should _not_ be thinking about kissing Waverly Earp right now. 

Waverly sits her down, and then kneels before her, her brow creased. She takes Nicole's hands in hers and asks, "What happened?" 

Nicole takes a deep breath. "Ummm." She runs quickly through all the reasons she shouldn't tell Waverly, and then all the reasons she should, and the cons are outweighed by the plea in Waverly's green eyes. God, those green eyes. 

God, she needs to fucking focus. What is wrong with her? 

"So, sometimes, I hear, like, other angels? And devils?" she starts. "We can, you know, transmit messages to each other telepathically. But only if we know where the recipient of our message is? So like, if you're an angel and I'm an angel, I have to know where you are to be able to telepathically communicate with you. Otherwise I'm just sending a message out into the world and that can backfire." 

Waverly bites her bottom lip. Nicole should not be watching her bite her bottom lip. "Okay."

"I haven't really, like, had someone communicate with me for a while," Nicole carries on. "I'm probably one of the only half-angels alive? We were all 'cleansed' a few years ago, but my...father...didn't want me to be killed. He kept on hoping I'd join him, you know? But anyways, I'm kind of...slightly hunted? Because firstly, I'm a...halfbreed...and secondly, because I was sired by an angel-turned-devil, so I'm seen as sort of destined to go down the same path?" 

Waverly nods, concerned, and then her eyes widen. "Shit! You wanted water?" 

"It's fine," Nicole assures her, but Waverly doesn't agree. 

"I'll be right back," the younger Earp tells her, and disappears. 

True enough, she literally  _is_ right back. It takes her about ten seconds to return with a glass of water. Nicole wonders how it's even possible for Waverly to know her way around her kitchen this well already. 

"Thank you," she says, genuinely, taking a much-needed gulp of cold water. 

There's so much compassion in Waverly's eyes that her heart blooms with warmth. "So, you were telling me you have a bounty on your head." 

Nicole almost laughs. "Kind of, I guess. No one - and nothing - has been able to figure out where I am since...well, for a year, or so. But I guess...when I killed him? My...father? It must have sent out some kind of signal, that burst of power." 

A faraway look comes into Waverly's eyes. "You were, like, super badass." 

"Was I?" Nicole can't stop herself from smiling. Waverly's eyes dart downward, and it's hard to tell whether she's looking at Nicole's mouth or her dimples. 

The younger Earp smiles widely at her. "I'll talk to Dolls about it," she promises. "And Wynonna, too."

Nicole's smile fades. "How is she?" 

"She's..." Waverly looks away. "She's coming around. Slowly, though. She just has stuff to work through, you know, concerning the whole...angel-devil thing." 

Nicole nods. "Well, could you tell her I'm sorry?" 

"Sorry? For what?" Waverly asks. 

"For, you know, not telling her sooner," Nicole says. "I still hate that she found out the way she did. And I hate...I hate that I put you in danger." 

"But you got me out of danger," Waverly tells her softly. She pauses, as though contemplating her next words. Then, "I think Wynonna's just in shock. She was really worried about me, and then she saw your wings and I think she got scared, or -" 

"Disgusted?" Nicole supplies. 

" _No_. Scared," Waverly insists. "And then  _she_ couldn't save me - Peacemaker didn't work, like, at all - and I think she's slightly bitter at herself. Because, you know, she locked you up? She was ready to throw away the key? And then  _you_ were the one who saved me. She's not used to dealing with someone so...you." 

"So me?" Nicole quirks an eyebrow. 

"Shut up," Waverly says. 

Nicole looks down, realising that Waverly's hands are still intertwined with hers. "I'm glad you're okay, Waves," she breathes. 

When she lifts her gaze, Waverly's eyes are wide, and she looks nervous and fidgety. "Well, that, umm, it's mutual," the Earp says back. 

And then there's quiet, and all Nicole can hear is breathing, and then she's leaning in and Waverly's leaning in and who leaned in first? And Waverly's hands are leaving hers but it's okay because her right hand is coming up to cup Nicole's chin and everything feels golden and - 

"We shouldn't," Waverly whispers. Nicole looks at her, really looks at her, and realises why Waverly is pulling back, pulling away, from her. 

Waverly Earp is terrified. Not of Nicole's inhumanness, not of her wings or her supernatural powers. No; Waverly Earp is terrified of her. Of this. Of them.

Nicole softens. A smile creeps onto her face. 

"I'm really sorry, you must feel like - you're smiling." Waverly tilts her head, and looks at her quizzically. "Why are you smiling?" 

"Because I think I just realised why you keep withdrawing," Nicole says. "Now, and before, after we fucked." 

Waverly frowns, ever so slightly. "Why do I keep withdrawing?" 

"I think you're scared," Nicole responds, softly, quietly. "I think I scare you."

All the tension seems to leave Waverly's body at those words, and she whirls away as though she needs to  _move,_ as though she needs to do something to let loose some of her energy. "I don't - I mean, you're right, like kind of, as in very probably, and I - I mean, it's shitty, right, because I never -" 

" _Waverly_ ," Nicole interrupts. "It's  _okay_. You're allowed to be scared. It's okay. It's okay." 

Waverly turns to face her again, and her green eyes are wide and vulnerable and heartbreakingly open. "I need time," she says, almost desperately. "Please? Give me some time?" 

Nicole feels as though if she pushes Waverly too hard right now, she'll run. So instead of asking her  _time for what?_ , she asks her, "Of course." 

Waverly smiles, and Nicole's heart pounds, and then the brunette envelopes her in a hug that's warm and beautiful and so much better than any kiss. 

"Thank you," she says. 

"Anytime," Nicole replies. 


	13. aftershocks

There's a knock at the door, and Waverly tells her that she'll get it. Nicole follows her out of the bedroom, though, and makes her way through the house, looking for Calamity Jane. 

"What are you doing here?" she hears. 

Why is Wynonna at her doorstep? 

"Making sure Nicole's okay," Waverly replies, and there's a protectiveness in her voice that makes Nicole smile. 

"Can we talk to her?" comes another voice. Dolls. If both of them are here, then that might mean they need her help on a case. 

She's due back at work on Monday, but God knows she'll get bored at home in the time before then. 

So she makes her entrance: peeks around the corridor, sees Wynonna standing there, her face reading grumpiness but her fidgeting reading nerves, and Dolls standing stoic and tight-jawed beside her. "What about?" she asks. 

Wynonna glances up and looks right at her and Nicole doesn't know how to decipher all that's swimming in the Earp heir's eyes. "Umm," she says, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. Waverly looks between the two of them worriedly. "Yeah. There was a murder found this morning, some old white dude, but there was some angel imagery? Jeremy did a little analysis on the scene and he thought, you know, that we should probably call on you. Maybe it's connected. Or something." 

Waverly meets Nicole's gaze. There's a question in her eyes, but Nicole is struck with an irrational realisation before she can figure out the meaning of it. 

She didn't dream last night. She had a dreamless sleep. 

She's hit with the irrational fear that even in death, even in nonexistence, her father retains some hold on her, some way to Jedi-mind-trick her into sleepkilling someone. She did it before, didn't she? Does Waverly think the same thing? Fuck, fuck, fuck. 

Is it maybe possible that other angels, other devils, can steal her faculties for a night the way her father could have? 

For a moment, her vision blanks and she panics. For a moment, she can't breathe, she can't fucking breathe, and fuck fuck fuck shit shit shit and her heart is thundering, thundering, and she barely  _think_ past the panic. 

And then there's Waverly, and behind her Dolls, and behind him a frowning, confused Wynonna. 

"You're okay, Nic, you're okay," Waverly breathes, and Nicole realises she's collapsed to the ground because Waverly is kneeling before her, is eye-level with her. 

Nicole inhales, deeply, and closes her eyes for a moment. She rises unsteadily to her feet, and waves Waverly away, but gently. "I'm all right now," she says. 

Waverly glances at Wynonna and Dolls and then back at Nicole, her brow creased adorably, and then she grabs Nicole by the arm and pulls her into the nearest room. "I think you should tell them," she says, "about the whole, you know, celestial beings out to get you think. They can help. Wynonna, with Peacemaker, she's formidable, you know, she can help. And Dolls - well, Dolls is Dolls." 

Nicole eyes her warily. "The last time -" 

"She won't lock you up again," Waverly says, firmly. "I'll make sure of it. And Dolls wouldn't let that happen either." 

Nicole sighs. "I don't know, Waves. I only told you because you were right there when it happened and you needed an explanation and -" 

"Nic," Waverly intones, softly. "It's okay to trust people." 

"Even when they don't trust you back?" Nicole challenges, arching an eyebrow. 

Waverly's face hardens at the comment. "Maybe you should take the first step towards a reconciliation?" 

Nicole rolls her eyes. "Why  _me_? I didn't do anything wrong. I did  _nothing_. Your sister needs to stop generalising an entire species because of one incident. Why should  _I_ be the one to kiss-kiss the division away?" 

Waverly narrows her eyes, and then disappears. When she returns, she's with Wynonna. 

"Okay," the youngest Earp says exasperatedly. "Honestly? You two are acting like children. You need to sit down, sort your shit out, and get back to being friends. Okay? Okay." 

She leaves them alone. 

Wynonna shifts uncomfortably. "I've actually been thinking, umm, a lot," she mumbles. 

Nicole looks at her expectantly. "About?" 

"You know." Wynonna makes a vague hand gesture. "I've been meaning, actually, to say sorry. For throwing you into that cage. It wasn't really, umm, fair of me. So I...yeah. I'm sorry. About that. And also, you know, thanks. For saving my baby sister's life. I owe you for that." 

"You don't  _owe_  me," Nicole scoffs. "I don't keep a score, or anything, of whose lives I save. You don't owe me anything. I saved Waverly's life because I saved Waverly's life. Don't you dare try to repay me for doing the right thing." 

Wynonna is looking at her with a strange expression on her face. Her brow is furrowed slightly and her eyes are narrowed like she's figuring something out. She's watching Nicole like she needs to solve her, like she  _is_ solving her. 

They spend a while in silence, watching each other. Nicole isn't sure what exactly is happening. Finally, Wynonna lets out a sigh. She relaxes, slightly, and looks bashfully down at the floor. 

"I know you're off work, for the week, and everything, but if you're up to it," she says to the floor, quietly, "maybe you can, you know, join me at Shorty's? Sometime?" 

Nicole wants to laugh, wants to throw her head back and laugh at the ceiling-obstructed sky because she's suddenly overwhelmed by hope. "Sure," she says, letting a smile overtake her features. 

Things are going to be okay.

#

Nicole sits Dolls and Wynonna down and tells them that she thinks she might be being hunted by other celestial beings. Waverly stands by her side and reaches for her hand every now and then to squeeze it in encouragement. 

At the end, Wynonna taps Peacemaker and says, "We'll give 'em hell." 

Dolls looks at Wynonna, looks at Nicole, looks at Waverly. He gives a curt nod, and then - Nicole can't quite believe her eyes - he smiles. "We got you, Haught." 

Nicole smiles, and squeezes Waverly's hand back.

#

Nicole goes to Shorty's. She and Wynonna still have a few issues that they need to discuss, a few things they need to smooth over, but they're okay. There's a deeper undercurrent of knowing, of protection, of open secrets, between them now, beneath their laughs. 

It feels good, though, to have her best friend back. It feels good to have a  _team_ , of sorts. 

Waverly pops in to bring her food or sometimes just conversation. After a while, she stops needing to find an excuse to rock up at Nicole's door. When they see each other, they smile as though they're hiding a treasure from the rest of the world, just the two of them. 

It feels good not to be alone anymore. 

She phones Shae. She tells her everything. 

"I'm glad," Shae tells her. "You deserve this, Nicole. You deserve to be happy." 

#

She goes back to work. Nedley shoots her a supportive smile. He checks in briefly - gruffly, of course - to ask how she is. She tells him she's doing well. 

She hasn't had a dreamless sleep since that first night, and the murders have kept on happening, so she can rest easy that she isn't being nightly hijacked for any killing sprees. But she knows that the string of murders are because of her: collateral damage. Devils don't care who they harm in a hunt. Angels see the end as justifying the means. 

She still has nightmares. She wakes up with cold sweat across her forehead, with a pounding heart. When that happens, she sits up in her bed, rocks herself slowly forward and backward, breathes in, out, in, out. Calamity Jane helps. Calamity Jane doesn't like her to explain or describe her dreams - in fact, Calamity Jane gets bored if she talks for too long - but Calamity Jane does enjoy quiet attention. She's warm, and fluffy, and grounds Nicole. If it's not too late in the night, or too early in the morning, she phones Waverly. 

Waverly's voice helps ground her, too. 

Nicole is doing well. 

There's trouble on the horizon - she can tell - but she can defeat it. 

Whatever is coming, she isn't afraid. She's ready to face it head on.


	14. and at the end of the tunnel, light

Nicole's routine starts to change, rather dramatically. She no longer seems to need to buy her own coffee on the way to work, because Waverly always pops in with Wynonna and brings coffee for her. She and Wynonna fall back into their routine of going to Shorty's almost nightly, but now she and Waverly spend moments of snatched time alone on those nights. 

And sometimes Waverly rocks up at her door, with no warning, and announces that she's going to cook dinner for her. 

It almost -  _almost_ \- feels like a relationship. 

But Nicole doesn't let herself think such treacherous thoughts, because she knows Waverly isn't ready for a relationship with her just yet, and she's not going to push. They can go at this thing - whatever it is - at Waverly's pace. She can wait. It's fine. She's fine. She doesn't mind. Not at all. 

She's an incredibly patient person. 

Sometimes, though, she wonders if Waverly is even human, because she seems to have this superpower of being superhumanly distracting. One time she dropped off coffee for Nicole while wearing yoga pants and a sleeveless crop top because she was planning on sparring with Wynonna and Nicole's brain may have forgotten how English worked, just a little, but she's become surprisingly decent at how much Waverly's stomach abs appeal to her. She's about 90% sure that Waverly has no idea how much Nicole wants to run her tongue up them. 

Well, maybe 99% sure. Waverly seems utterly oblivious of the effect she has on Nicole. She wears crop tops and thigh-high boots and way-too-red lipstick and tops that show way too much chest and Nicole  _dies_ and Waverly seems to have no idea at all of how this is  _torturous._

She's fine with all this, really. She's waiting for Waverly to make the first move, any move. If Waverly never makes that move, well, then she'll just have to move on. 

# 

Just before December comes, Nedley promotes her to deputy. She's surprised. 

To celebrate, Wynonna takes her out drinking. Then she takes her to a strip club. Her official reasoning is that Nicole needs to be distracted from Waverly. 

The next Monday, Waverly storms into the station and plonks herself down on Nicole's desk. She's wearing yet another crop top - how many of those does she have? Does the universe not have  _any_ mercy for one Nicole Haught? - and incredibly tight fitting pants, but Nicole is not noticing any of that, no, she's focusing purely on her paperwork and now she's glancing into Waverly's green eyes and  _nowhere else_. 

"Wanna fight?" Waverly asks. 

Nicole freezes. "Umm?" She looks up at Waverly, frowning, and tries again. "Fight? Context, please." 

"Like, spar," Waverly corrects herself, swinging her legs and smiling down at Nicole. "I want to widen my circle of sparring partners. So far it's only Wynonna. But Dolls told me you're good at fighting and stuff, so I figured it would be fun." 

Nicole narrows her eyes slightly. This seems like an incredibly dangerous idea. She should not be considering it. "You want to spar with me," she says. 

"Well, yeah," Waverly tells her, and those green eyes are bright and excited and Nicole knows that it's very likely that she's going to agree to this. 

So much, Nicole thinks, for being distracted from Waverly. 

"When?" she asks. "Do you want to? Fight?" 

Waverly gives a carefree shrug and looks away briefly and Nicole's eyes do  _not_ drop anywhere. Nope. They don't. Not at all. "I mean, when would you be able to?" 

Nicole sweeps her gaze over the paperwork she should be doing. "Part of why I came to Purgatory," she says, "is because it's a really boring town, police-wise." 

Waverly turns back to look at her and offers her a grin. "Really, Deputy Haught?" 

Nicole pauses, because there's an undercurrent in Waverly's voice of what might be called  _flirtatiousness._ "Really," she says seriously. "So I'm pretty much free now. I'd have to change, of course." 

Waverly's smile widens and Nicole knows she's a goner. "This is awesome! I'm so excited!"

# 

This was a terrible idea. 

Nicole has Waverly pinned to the ground, and Waverly's hand has currently travelled to the small of her back to tap out, and the Earp is sweating and panting, and Nicole is cursing whatever made her agree to this. 

Waverly's eyes, she thinks, as she eases off Waverly with a smile. She should be cursing Waverly's eyes. It's their fault. 

"You're way better than Wynonna at this," Waverly pants, rising to her feet. 

Nicole wonders if she's imagining the dilation of Waverly's pupils. "Well, I have been trained to fight," she says. "Plus, I'm kind of not human." 

Waverly grins at her, still panting. "You know, I was half-expecting your wings to just pop out." 

Nicole laughs. "That would only happen if I was losing." 

Waverly pauses. "Really?" She doesn't seem to have expected for this to be an actual possibility, and Nicole can't help but laugh again. 

"Yeah," she replies. "I dunno, but it's sort of this self-defense mechanism. If I get too scared or if I'm in danger? My...like...angel-side comes out. Whenever my father contacted me, like, telepathically, it used to happen. My eyes start to glow and my wings 'pop out' and everything." 

Waverly looks slightly taken aback. Maybe she's surprised that Nicole is being so open with her? Honestly, Nicole has no idea at all why she's telling her this. There's something about those green eyes that make her want to spill all her secrets. 

"That," Waverly says, at last, "is so freakin' cool." 

"Freakin'?" Nicole echoes, with a laugh. "Mind the fucking language, please."

Waverly swats her arm playfully. "Shut up." 

# 

Waverly starts trying to scare her. 

It takes her a while to figure it out, because at first she's bemused, and then she's confused. By the fifth time Waverly jumps out from behind a corner with a screech of something or other, she finally puts two and two together, while she's patrolling the town. 

She stops at Shorty's and storms in. 

"You've been trying to make my wings come out," she says, somewhat indignantly, at Waverly's back. 

Waverly freezes. There's the sound of something spurting, and Waverly lets out an "Oh, shit." 

"Waves?" Nicole asks. 

"This thing - I've been trying to get Shorty to fix it for, like, ever," Waverly complains, and she turns around. Nicole realises three things: 1) the spurting sound came from the beer handle that Waverly was fiddling with, 2) it spurted beer all over Waverly's shirt, and 3) Waverly is wearing a white shirt that is now completely wet. "God, I'm completely soaked now."

"Uh," is all Nicole can say. 

Waverly offers her an apologetic grin, grabbing a cloth from the side of the bar. She proceeds to dab at her chest. "Sorry about this," she says. "What were you saying?" 

Well, Nicole thinks. Fuck. "Just that - I figured out why you were always jumping out at me." 

"You did?" Waverly glances down at her drenched shirt - the cloth, it seems, has not done much to assuage the situation - and grimaces. "I think I have an extra shirt down here somewhere, so I think I'll - hey, Nic, do you mind, maybe, turning around?" 

 _I've seen you in less,_ Nicole thinks of saying, but Waverly seems embarrassed enough already. "Sure," she says instead, with a reassuring smile. She turns around, but she's hyperaware of the sound of Waverly pulling the shirt over her head and - stopping. 

"Umm, okay, so I kind of think I need some help," Waverly says, and Nicole can hear the embarrassment in her voice. It makes her smile. 

"Does this mean I can turn around?" Nicole asks. 

"Yeah, you can just - if you can, like -" 

Nicole doesn't hear the rest of Waverly's words. She turns around and sees Waverly with her shirt stuck, somehow - maybe in her hair? - but she doesn't really care about how it's stuck because she's way too distracted by all the  _skin_ she can see and - okay. She shakes her head, trying to focus. 

Waverly looks up at her with wide, vulnerable eyes as she approaches. 

"So I'll just...help you get this off," Nicole mumbles. She's right in front of Waverly now, and hypersensitive of how little space there is between them, but she breathes in and focuses on taking off Waverly's shirt without tangling it more with whatever it's tangled with. 

"Sorry," Waverly says, as Nicole eases the shirt over her head. "I know this is awkward..." 

"Why?" Nicole asks, laughingly. "Because we've had sex?" 

She discards Waverly's shirt and can't hide her smile when she sees the blush adorning Waverly's cheeks. "I mean..." the Earp trails off again, and meets Nicole's eyes, shyly. 

Nicole can't stop her eyes from dropping to Waverly's lips. She wonders if they'd taste like beer if she... 

She is hit by the belated realisation that Waverly Earp is topless before her. And she's wearing a really pretty bra, and her chest is still slightly damp, and they're still really close to each other, and Nicole can't quite form thoughts. All she's aware of is how Waverly's lips are shining slightly, and her hair smells really really nice, and Nicole really loves it down because it's pretty and long and God, she really wants to kiss her. 

So she does. 

It's probably a bad idea, but she's not thinking practically. Instead, she's leaning forward, slowly, slow enough that Waverly can pull away if she wants to, and she's bringing her right hand slowly around to intertwine with Waverly's beautiful hair, and her left hand touches down around Waverly's waist, and Waverly  _arches_ , slightly, but enough, and her green eyes are wide and then she closes them and leans forward too, and their lips meet, and it's beautiful. 

They kiss, and kiss, and kiss. Nicole tangles her fingers in Waverly's hair, which is so beautifully silky that Nicole wants to run her hands through it for hours. Nicole grips her waist more tightly, and Waverly's arms circle her neck. She can smell that distinctly Waverly scent beneath the beer, that aroma of _summer_ , and her heart is pounding. Nicole tugs gently at Waverly's lower lip and smiles at the Earp's resulting moan. Waverly tastes slightly of beer, but she's wearing cherry lipgloss and Nicole never thought that she'd enjoy the combination of cherry and beer but on Waverly's lips, she loves it. She loves  _this_ , all of it, the way Waverly is still arching into her, soft and warm and beautiful, and heat rushes through Nicole at the feeling of Waverly's breasts pressed against her, and she thinks she's in love with the feeling of having Waverly, soft Waverly,  _Waverly_ , up against her. She takes a chance, and runs her tongue against Waverly's lips, and then, suddenly, Waverly pulls away. 

Waverly is breathing heavily. The green of her eyes has darkened to a colour that's almost brown. 

"Sorry," Nicole breathes, stepping away, but the look in Waverly's eyes gives her a spurt of confidence. "It's just that, you know, when I see something I want, I don't...really wanna wait." 

Waverly's eyebrows dart up and she bites her lip and Nicole suddenly worries that she's said too much. 

"I mean," she rushes, "I would wait, anyway. For you. I'll wait." 

Waverly looks down, and there's a faint blush on her cheeks. She's smiling, Nicole realises, and she relaxes. 

"Thank you," Waverly says. "For helping me with my shirt." 

Disappointment rushes through Nicole at the words. She hides it. What was she expecting, anyway? She smiles. "If you ever need someone to take off your shirt, I'm your girl," she jokes. 

# 

She buries herself in paperwork for the rest of the day. 

When Wynonna tries to pull her off to Shorty's, she declines. "I'm feeling a little tired, is all," she says to excuse herself. The truth is that she's not sure how to face Waverly just yet. There's a mixture of embarrassment and disappointment churning in her stomach. She needs to get herself together. 

"Well, I'll, you know, miss you," Wynonna mutters, and Nicole can't help but grin. "See you tomorrow, though." 

Nicole gives her a thumbs up. "Tomorrow." 

#

By the time she's finished all the paperwork she needed to fill out - God, she hates paperwork, but it needs to be done - she's alone in the station, and it's late. She sighs, and stretches, and moves to grab her jacket and car keys. 

She's standing up when she hears something. She freezes, listens. She doesn't call out to see who's there, because why would she do that? 

She gets out her phone and finds Wynonna in the contacts, just in case. A drunk Earp heir is still an Earp heir, she figures. If she's about to be ambushed by some supernatural entity, she can use the help. Probably. Might as well rely on on other people.

And then a message screams through her head. 

 _Found you,_ the messengers whisper.

She phones Wynonna, who picks up surprisingly quickly. "Haughtshit! Regretting your decision to be borin'?" 

She's only slurring  _slightly,_ Nicole figures. "I may need your help," she says, as through the window she spots wings. Five pairs, six pairs...how dangerous do they think she is? 

"Where do you need me?" Wynonna asks, and if Nicole weren't so tense she'd retort with a joke, but now is not the time. 

Thirteen fucking pairs of wings. 

"Station," she says, just as the first devil crashes through the window. 

"I'll be there," Wynonna says, but Nicole is already throwing the phone to the side and letting her inner angel side have the reins. Her wings burst from her shoulder blades, and she feels fire in her veins, and she feels her eyes start to glow. 

"Bring it the  _fuck_ on," she tells her attackers. 

 

 

 


	15. punches, bullets, wings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a shortish chapter, and ends on a kinda-sorta cliffhanger... ;)   
> I might not be posting super regularly for the next two weeks, so this ends on a hopeful note to tide you over in case it's a while until the next chapter.

The first devil surges towards her and she strikes him down with a fist of fire and a beat of a wing. 

"What is this, some sort of a-common-enemy-brings-us-together shit?" she shouts out, because there aren't 13 devils come to take her, but rather five devils, and six angels. 

One angel - his wings are the largest - hangs back as everyone else fans into the station and glares menacingly at her. So, he's the co-ordinator-type dude. She sighs. 

He's also the one to answer her question. "We both have equal claim to you," he says. "We needed to combine forces in order to be  _able_ to lay claim." 

"You're gonna fight it out later?" she asks, quirking an eyebrow. 

"Something like that," he says. 

Then twelve celestial beings attack her, all at once. 

# 

"Hey, baby girl, I gotta go, can I settle my tab later?" Wynonna asks. 

Waverly frowns. "What's with the urgency?" Usually, her sister  _plans_ to leave Shorty's for upwards of an hour before actually deciding to put her plans to action. 

"Trouble," is all Wynonna says. 

Waverly's frown deepens. 

"I'll cover her tab," comes a drawled voice. 

"Thanks, Doc," Wynonna says, with a lopsided smile and a wink at the gunslinger. 

Then she's off. Waverly tries to share a look with Doc, but he just shrugs. "So," he says. "How much do I owe you?" 

# 

"Hold up, hold up," Nicole says. She's got an angel and a devil under headlock, the angel imprisoned by her right wing and the devil by her left arm. "I'm a responsible person, and I don't wanna, you know, mess up my workplace. Doesn't really good in the eyes of my boss, you know what I mean? So how about we calm things down for a bit, and head outside? I can continue kicking your asses out there just as well." 

Without waiting for anyone to answer, she slowly eases herself towards the closest door. She doesn't let go of her two hostages, and keeps them in the line of fire. Whenever either one of them starts to struggle, she sends a little zap of electricity through their spines, and that stills them for a few seconds more. 

Sure enough, her opponents all follow her outside. She doesn't realise that the angel with the biggest wings is waiting to ambush her until she hears a gunshot, a grunt, and Wynonna yelling out, "Wynonna 1, angels 0." 

She almost wants to laugh. Instead, she releases her captives by hurling each of them in different directions. They land with the crack of broken bones. 

"I got your special angel-repellent gun," Wynonna tells her, jogging to her side and pressing the assault rifle into Nicole's hands. 

"The bullets are more angel-repellent than the gun," Nicole replies, hoisting the rifle up and firing off a few shots into the eyes of the oncoming angel-devil charge. "Aim for their eyes, Wyn." 

"Gotcha." There's a grin on Wynonna's face. Nicole didn't expect her to be so excited about this, but now she wonders why she didn't. It's Wynonna, after all. 

Together, they make a really awesome team. 

At some point, Nicole hands Wynonna the assault rifle too. The Earp shoots out angel and devil eyes, and Nicole goes in for the kill. The Earp punches with her fists. Nicole punches with her wings and her fists. 

By midnight, all thirteen celestial enemies have been vanquished. Eyeless carcasses smoulder on the road outside the station. 

Wynonna high-fives Nicole. 

# 

Nicole drives home - slowly, because she's exhausted and she's had enough of adrenalin-inducing activities for the week - and finds Waverly waiting for her on her porch. She pauses, squints to make sure she's seeing right. 

She is. 

She checks the time. It's 12:54. She frowns. Waverly should not be at her doorstep. Waverly should be sleeping. Why is Waverly not doing what she should be? 

Waverly sees her, then, and offers a wave. Nicole doesn't return it. She leaves her car, and trudges up to her porch. "Waves," she greets. 

"Good morning," Waverly says, and then looks up at her. Her face immediately falls, and her brow furrows deeply. "Nicole, what happened?" 

"Uh." Nicole brings her hand up to her face, and when it comes away it's slick with black and white liquid. "Shit. Umm, it's not mine?" 

"It's  _blood_?" Waverly leaps to her feet, but Nicole grasps her by the shoulders before she can do anything else. 

"Yeah. Devils have black blood, angels have white blood. It's not mine," she says. "I'm okay." 

Waverly stares intensely up at her for a few moments before she deflates. "You were the trouble." 

Nicole frowns. "I'm sorry?" 

"Wynonna left the bar because of trouble," Waverly explains. "It was you, wasn't it?" 

Nicole shrugs. "We fight well together. I needed help." 

"Did you give them hell?" Waverly asks, a playfulness in her voice. 

Nicole gives a tired grin. "Yeah, we did." 

She removes her hands from Waverly's shoulders when she notices the Earp shivering. "Let's go inside, okay? It's cold," she says, and doesn't give Waverly a chance to argue before she's unlocking her door and bundling her inside. 

Nicole settles Waverly down on her couch, runs off to get rid of the blood and dust on her skin and change into clean clothes, and then returns ready to ask the question she's had since she saw Waverly on her porch. 

"Why were you waiting at my house after midnight?" Nicole asks. 

Waverly takes a deep breath. "Umm, I. I wanted to tell you something. I had this whole speech prepared, and stuff, and it was really good, but you weren't home...so I...waited. For you to come home."

"Okay," Nicole says, carefully. "What was it you wanted to tell me?" 

Waverly looks at her with wide eyes, and bites her lip. "I...can't really remember some of the speech." 

Nicole smiles. "Waves, you don't need a speech to...impress me, or whatever." 

Waverly still looks uncertain. She swallows, and takes another deep breath. "Well. I meant to tell you, umm. That I made a decision." 

"A decision?" Nicole prompts her, softly. 

Waverly looks at her, closes her eyes. When she opens them again, they're bright with determination. "Fuck waiting," she says. 

Nicole is startled. She doesn't want to assume that Waverly means what she thinks she means, so she's ready to talk this through to make sure there are no misunderstandings when Waverly speaks again. 

"I was scared," she says. "You were right. I was. But I realised that I should push past it. I realised that it was unfair, making you wait, for me, just because I was...frightened. So I don't want you to. Or, you don't need to. Anymore. No more waiting. Fuck waiting. I like you, Nicole. I really, really like you. And if you're ready to...stop? Waiting? Then I'm ready too." 

 


	16. the beginning of something beautiful

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no excuse for keeping y'all waiting...but here's possibly the fluffiest chapter yet to make up for it? *shifts apologetically*

For a moment, Nicole forgets how to breathe. She considers, briefly, how unlucky she must be that the woman of her dreams confessed her - like? for her? - when she is covered in black and white blood.

“Nic?” Waverly furrows her brow.

Nicole smiles, a slow, warm smile, and moves to touch her palm against Waverly’s cheek. Waverly leans into the touch, and Nicole’s heart fucking melts. “I really wish I wasn't so bloody right now,” she whispers.

Waverly raises an eyebrow. “Patience is a virtue,” she teases.

Nicole gives her a questioning look in response, before softening again, because Waverly is here, because Waverly is ready, because her heart feels full and light. “I'm so fucking glad I came to this boring small town,” Nicole says. She takes Waverly’s hands in hers, strokes her fingers over the younger Earp’s soft skin. “And I think you've just given me the best news I've heard all year.”

Waverly grins, her face lighting up, and it's the sweetest, most beautiful thing. “Good,” she murmurs, almost shyly.

Nicole bites her bottom lip. “Do you want to stay over?”

Waverly tilts her head.

“Just to sleep,” Nicole clarifies. “And I’m going to shower first, obviously. I just...if you don't mind. It would be nice to not sleep alone.”

Waverly’s smile is soft and breathtaking and answer enough.

 

#

 

Nicole is pretty sure she's discovered the secret to a perfect morning. Main ingredient: a Waverly Earp, cocooned in most of the duvet, snuggling against her, hair strewn over the pillows.

Nicole is also pretty sure that she might even be in love.

“Waves,” she whispers, and the brunette lets out a little murmur of a groan, shifting only slightly, and Nicole decides that it would be heartless to wake her up. Instead, she decides that, given the number of times Waverly cooked for her, it's time to return the favor.

 

#

 

“You've never cooked me anything.”

Nicole starts slightly at Wynnona’s voice.

She spins around from the countertop in the break room where she was stirring milk into her coffee.

“For a half-angel you get taken by surprise way too easily,” Wynonna comments.

Nicole considers sticking her tongue out at her, but decides that's probably a little too childish. “What was that about cooking?”

Wynonna pouts. Nicole barely manages to stifle her laughter. “You cooked Waverly breakfast, apparently. God, it took one night to turn you into a sappy mess of a lovesick idiot. And I'm hurt because I'm your best friend and you have _never_ cooked me breakfast.”

“Hmm.” Nicole pretends to think Wynonna’s words over. “Well, I gave you whiskey once.”

Wynonna is unconvinced.

“I give you continuous opportunities to get involved in high-octane action fights?” Nicole tries again.

Wynonna sighs. “Okay, fine. That's better than breakfast.”

Nicole grins.

Just as Wynonna’s preparing to leave, the Earp heir says over her shoulder, “Don’t forget, though. I know how to kill angels now, so if you hurt my sister...”

“I’d give you the bullets myself,” Nicole responds, amusement gone from her voice.

There's a pause. Wynonna taps her boots against the side of the doorway. “You’re a good one, Nic,” she says, quietly, as though she’s trying to make it harder for Nicole to hear. “I'm glad you two figured the love shit out.”

Nicole figures that's the best endorsement she could have asked for.

 

#

 

The fights don't stop coming. They won't, not for a while. Now that the celestial community at large knows Nicole’s whereabouts, she has a target on her back. Not to mention, Dolls seems to have gathered infamy throughout his life, so sometimes creatures try have a go at him, too. And of course the Earp heir has a bounty on her head, too, but Wynonna seems to enjoy the promise of a fight more than she fears the fact that she's wanted dead by more than a few creatures.

And Waverly - well, Waverly looks incredibly hot wielding a shotgun even when Nicole expressly tells her that she does _not_ need her to fight for her. Waverly also insists on sparring matches, saying it's just for practice, but they both know that's it's definitely not, and Nicole’s pretty sure that - given the eyerolls and excessive sarcasm - Wynonna knows too.

When Waverly sleeps over in Nicole’s bed, she no longer hogs the covers. Instead, she lets Nicole cocoon her in her wings. It's remarkably intimate, sharing this inhuman side of herself in such a way, Waverly curled against her chest, the both of them in their own, feather-helmed world. Waverly loves Nicole’s wings, and seeing them through her eyes makes it a little harder for Nicole to be repelled at the sight of them, makes it a little easier for Nicole to accept _nephilim_ as a description with a smile.

Wynonna and Dolls continue to dance around each other, and it's simultaneously amusing and incredibly confusingly unpredictable, but Nicole knows, probably for the first time since she can really remember, that everything's going to turn out alright.

There are still times when she comes staggering back home after a fight, and at first Waverly hears, or assumes, from Wynonna and rushes over to feel Nicole, to touch Nicole, to remind the both of them that they’re here and alive and together, and after a while Nicole starts spending more time at the Homestead, starts taking up space in Waverly’s drawers, and they develop the kind of domesticity that Nicole always dreamed of but was too scared to hope for, and Wynonna copes with earmuffs and heavy sarcasm whenever she overhears them, which is fairly often, but they make it up to her with a gunfight or a box of donuts or a beer or a whiskey just to smooth things over.

Jeremy and Waverly are little shits sometimes, though, because Nicole _swears_ that they do their best to make her wings pop out unexpectedly, and she knows that Jeremy is skittish and she knows all of Waverly’s weaknesses and it's all too satisfying when she and Wynonna team up to get back at the two of them in an increasingly escalating prank war that has Nedley exasperatedly voicing plans for early retirement if they don't stop acting like bored teenagers. Nicole's also fairly certain that Wynonna is complicit in Jeremy and Waverly's actions just so that she can act righteously mischievous by Nicole's side.

It's ridiculous. They're ridiculous. But Nicole would never change any of this for the world.

Every now and then Shae still phones. She keeps threatening to come visit and meet Waverly, and whenever Nicole first mentioned it, something like uncertain jealousy would run through Waverly’s eyes, but it only took a few vigorous assurances of _I’m yours, wholly_  (and Waverly’s subsequent angel pun, which she doesn't believe will ever get old, contrary to Nicole’s very firm belief that it already very much is), Waverly instead grins and warns that she’ll ask Shae for all the most embarrassing details from Nicole's life _before_ , and Nicole isn't sure whether or not to be terrified.

Nicole looks around her life now and sees Waverly, who may just be her soulmate, and Wynonna, who is both her best friend and partner in crime, and Dolls, who never doesn't understand, and she realizes that out of nothing, she's built herself a family.

She’s found herself a happy ending.


End file.
